


Bold in Deed

by Mirabai0821



Series: The Heraldry Series [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood Magic, Drama, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Drama, Female Character of Color, Gaslighting, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Original Character of Color, Politics, Racism, Racist Language, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:03:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 121,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5027695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirabai0821/pseuds/Mirabai0821
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So you’ve come back.</p><p>You remembered what I said about the bards, about how full of shit they are. You came back because you knew their story wasn’t over yet.<br/>Those two got too much to do. Battles to win, battles to lose, friends to make enemies and enemies to make friends. A world to keep right while they fight to keep their own damn hearts right, and let me tell you that won’t be easy. So you can just forget about that happily ever after nonsense.<br/>I mean have you seen them? Do you honestly believe <i>they</i> would live happily ever after?</p><p>Nope.</p><p>Not those two.</p><p>Not by a long shot.</p><p>So let me tell you what happens next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Weight of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up right where Into Darkness, Unafraid left off and references it heavily. Read that first if you haven't. Read it again if you want to pick up the little references!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! I wasn't planning on posting this until a little farther down in the development cycle but Into Darkness, Unafraid has reached 10,000 hits and that's just amazing to me! So in celebration, here starts the second part of the Heraldry series that I hope is just as wildly popular as its predecessor! I am utterly humbled by how much people liked IDA. Well and true considering it was the first long fic I have ever written to completion (and how, 160K + words, Maker's Breath!) Utterly floored and speechless all the wonderful things you've guys have said about how much you enjoy Evelyn (still having a hard time with this, I didn't think she'd resonate with so many people), Cullen, Dorian, Vivienne, and the Iron Bull. So thank you so much! I can keep going because you all leave me so much love! This is here now because of how much y'all have shown your love.
> 
> So let's go.

Time slowed after she destroyed Corypheus. The frenetic, frantic, race to the end just stopped after the end. Evelyn summited the mountain, ready and expecting to die at its peak, unaware that now there were more mountains, a range of them, stretching on and on and on waiting for her, only for her, danger concealed behind every stone.

The anchor in her hand shimmered a bit, tingling with a subtle heat, a reminder that she was still marked. They still called her the Herald of Andraste, the Bride’s Chosen, Maker sent, and she suspected now they always will. No matter what happened now, how many mountains would come after this one, Evelyn Cecilia Renee Marie Trevelyan, died the day the Conclave exploded. No part of that woman was coming back and she could never be who she was before it.

Now, duty required her to be something more.

_You are the Inquisitor._

_You must always be more._

The thought sat heavy in her stomach, settled heavier on her shoulders.

But.

At least the weight wouldn't be borne alone.

With people like Dorian, and Iron Bull, like Vivienne, and Josephine, Leliana, and Cole. With people like Blackwall and Sera and Cassandra and Varric.

With the love of a man like Cullen, she stood straighter, the weight adjusted, and her burden eased.

She could carry the world with them.

She would carry the world for them.

For him.

She smiled thinking of him, her lion made of flesh and gold. He made her itch, fingernails scratching, body tingling, every part of her he set alight with the urge to spread arms like wings and _fly_. She wanted her bow in one hand, him in the other, and the forest under her feet, out and free and hunting again.

And as though summoned, she heard the metallic clanking of shifting armor approach. Her smile widened, knowing without sight that it was him.

He carried her down the mountain when they found her after Corypheus. He would not let her go. Her legs worked fine, in fact she was curiously well healed considering the beating she took from the dragon and the darkspawn asshole.

But Cullen had tears in his eyes and he wasn’t quite sure why. Everyone had mysterious tears in their eyes that they later attributed to overwhelming joy because it was inexplicable any other way. So she let him carry her, whispering over and over again “I told you, I told you I’d see you again. I’ma always come back if I know you’re waiting for me. Always.”

He was tender that first time, tears in both their eyes that they just could not explain. They had to stop, semi-nude in the darkness and just clutch. Hold on for dear life as the tears, and the shaking, and the overwhelming _something_ neither could put words to passed them by.

“Evelyn, Maker, I…”

“Shh…I know. Shh.”

They were much better the morning after, giggling and smiling between sloppy, sensual kisses. They made love like newlyweds with the stamina and enthusiasm of teenagers for two weeks.

She turned to him as he approached, a smile bubbling up on her lips, waiting patiently for whatever it was he had to say. Cullen clenched his hand into a fist over and over again, the makings of a nervous flush creeping up the sides of his neck, blooming in his cheeks and turning the shell of his ears bright red. The hand stuffed into his pocket gripped the rings possessively, making sure they were still there. He didn’t want to lose this pair.

He coughed, clearing his throat, and opened his mouth.

“My lady…”

Evelyn jerked at the sound of the scout running up to them, calling for the Herald.

Jim.

“My lady,” he repeated. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But I have an urgent summons from Madame de Fer.”

Jim looked at Cullen apologetically unaware of what he had interrupted. Cullen just stood by, completely at a loss, how could one man be so _good_ at interrupting the most important moments of his life?

Thank the Maker though, for Evelyn.

“Tell Viv she’ll have to wait, I’ll get there when I get there. Can’t you see the Commander…”

“Actually ma’am, the summons isn’t for you, it’s for him.”

Jim pointed to Cullen.

“Me?”

“Him?”

Jim gulped. “Yes.”

Evelyn cocked her head to the side. “You better go see what she wants.”

“Bu—but.”

“If she’s asking for you, it’s probably important. I wouldn’t make her wait. Don’t worry, love, I’ll be here. Whatever you gotta say can’t be that important right?”

“R…right,” Cullen muttered.

**

There was no tea set out. There were no potions bubbling in her cauldron. Her silks were gone, so was her expensive chaise she insisted be brought all the way from Val Chevin. In fact, in Vivienne’s solar there was nothing, no evidence she’d ever been here.

She was directing men, dressed in the livery of the Chantry. “Be a dear and put this vase with the rest of the gifts for the Comtess. Ah, Commander.” She waved away her movers and gestured for him to sit on the last piece of furniture left.

A leg rest.

“Madam, what’s this about? Are you moving to better rooms in the keep?”

Vivienne chuckled musically. “No dear, I’m moving out. The Grand Consensus has been called and I’ve learned my name is on the short list of potential new Divines.”

Vivienne made a face as Cullen’s eyebrows rose almost incredulously. She made a light coughing noise to inform the Commander his expression was most unwelcome.

“Ahh, forgive me, I just can’t picture it.”

Vivienne smiled with no mirth, that dainty pretty smile that concealed daggers behind her brilliant white teeth.

“Picture what exactly dear?”

“You…as…the Most Holy.”

Vivienne laughed again, the sound freezing Cullen’s guts “And by that do you mean a mage, or a former mistress, or a mud-“

“No, Maker’s breath no!” Cullen cut her off before she could employ the slur. “I mean you, Vivienne. I figured you’d stay with Evelyn. She adores you, outside of Dorian, you’re her best friend.”

Vivienne’s face softened, pleased by the Commander’s response. But her smile changed, and the cold fire in her eyes warmed.

“Alas, it is not to be.” She closed an ornate wooden box. “I have done my part here, assisted Lady Trevelyan as best as I could. Now it is time for me to assist her elsewhere and I can do that best from the Sunburst Throne.”

“I see, why are you telling me this? Shouldn’t you be speaking with her?”

“And I will, in due time, but I wanted to chat with you first.”

Cullen kept silent, waiting for Vivienne to continue. He didn’t like this, Evelyn would be heartbroken, but he suspected, given by the shadows in Madam de Fer’s eyes that the heartbreak would be mutual. He remembered Vivienne screaming when they found her, he remembered her babbling in a language he never heard before.

He didn’t remember why.

“We are entering dangerous times.”

“We just came out of dangerous times.” Cullen corrected.

“No, and that you think such is why I need to warn you.”

“Warn me? What do you know? Is there a threat?”

“Against her life, there will _always_ be a threat Commander. When I am Divine, and rest assured, that is but a foregone conclusion. There will be changes, changes that will rattle and shake the foundations of the world. And the thing about change is there will always be people guaranteed to hate it. And they will come after me, and most importantly they will come for her. I brought you here, Commander, to remind you to be vigilant. It is incorrect to assume the worst is over. It will _never_ be over.”

Cullen grit his teeth and clutched the rings in his pocket a little tighter. “I appreciate your concern Madam, but I must disagree. After Corypheus what worse could there be?”

Vivienne snorted rather unprettily, caught unaware by the Commander’s naiveté. She curled her tongue, readying a blistering retort.

“Viv!” Evelyn shouted, from below. “What are you doing with my Commander?” Her voice startled the pair and knocked the fight right out of Vivienne. She sighed deeply and placed a hand on the Commander’s shoulder, gripping harder than he thought was possible from her. “She was something real when all around me was lies and deception and niceties. I have no children, and I never will. Yet she is the closest thing the Maker has allowed me to have as a daughter. Do not let harm befall her or I will personally see to your destruction. As I will, if you breathe any word of that little confession to her. Am I clear Commander Rutherford?”

Cullen gulped. “Crystal.”

“Viv!”

The mage transformed again, all smiles and pleasantries. “Very good, now if you’ll excuse me. I must speak with the Inquisitor.”

So dismissed, Cullen passed Evelyn by, eyes on the ground, mind deep in the implications of his conversation with the future Divine. He slipped his fingers into the gold loops in his pocket, swearing, vowing, that no harm will come to her.

No matter what.

**

“What in the Void was that all about?” Evelyn asked.

“Come here girl,” Vivienne commanded gently, ignoring the question. Evelyn made a face but approached close enough to let the older woman run a hand through her hair. “Here, allow me to fix these for you.”

Evelyn shied, Vivienne was the most heavyhanded when it came to hair. Always pulling and snatching, and cooing “pain is beauty dear,” whenever she made Evelyn screech in pain.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll handle it.” And by handle it she meant make Cullen do it later but Vivienne didn’t need to know that.

“Please?” Vivienne insisted, the woman never asked. “For old time’s sake.”

The Inquisitor with the vines for hair nodded and sank to the floor, coming to rest between Vivienne’s knees. From the wooden box, Vivienne produced a vial of hair oil, she dabbed her fingers in it and set to work.

“What did you want with Cullen?”

“I had some things to give him. Things I didn’t want to take with me.”

“Take with you? Ouch!”

“I’m leaving, Evelyn.”

“Yeah, that much I can see. I assume you have some business to conduct with Bastien’s family. How long you gonna be gone?”

“Permanently dear. And it’s nothing to do with the duke.”

Evelyn stilled. “What?”

“The Grand Consensus has been called. They mean to make me Divine.”

“Get the fuck out! Ahh!” Vivienne snatched at a loose root, tearing out a few hairs.

“Language dear. And yes, it is true. Your Seeker and your Spymaster were also up for consideration given their relationship with Divine Justinia, but it seems there has been a delegation led by the Ghislain estate to see me on the Sunburst Throne. I have been recalled to Val Royeaux for the final vote.”

“Viv…you, the Divine. Maker’s balls, do you know what that would mean?”

“Yes, there’s never been a mage Divine before.”

“You could do…so much!” She turned in Vivienne’s grasp. “You could change everything. The mage and templar conflict, you could wipe it out. Mages could be free. Templars, they wouldn’t…what Cullen and Samson went through would never happen again! Viv, you can change the world!”

Vivienne made a small noise in the back of her throat. They always butted heads over this. Evelyn sat firmly in the seat of mage freedom while Vivienne advocated for a more cautious approach. “I will. You will see.”

“Tell me, you gotta tell me!” She turned back around, eager to hear Vivienne’s grand plan. But Vivienne took her two hands and gently turned the Inquisitor’s head back where she wanted it.

“I don’t know exactly the form it will take, but change will come and I need to know you’ll support me, whatever happens.”

“Anything Vivienne. Anything.”

Vivienne smiled, fingers gently running through the Inquisitor’s hair. “Thank you darling, that means the world to me.”

She worked the hair in silence, pulling the roots apart as gently as she could, separating the locs that have grown together in the periods between maintenance. She applied the oil, running fingers down the lines of the parts, tracing squares and diamonds in Evelyn’s hair.

“Keep these well-oiled.”

“I will.”

“And remember your conjugations. Your Orlesian is not as perfect as you think.”

Evelyn heard a sniff. Vivienne was saying goodbye. “Oui.”

“Remember, this isn’t over. The Game is never over. Everyone will be watching, even harder now that they do not have the Breach to distract them. Your choices will be scrutinized like never before, and your enemies will be waiting for you to make the one slip, expose that one weakness they will exploit to ruin and destroy you. Always be mindful of this.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“But remember no matter what, I will always,” _love you as though you were born of my body_. “Be your trusted friend and available for advice. The Inquisition and the Chantry must repair their relationship. I expect after my coronation there will be a formal recognition ceremony.”

“ ‘kay.” Evelyn answered softly.

Once finished, the Inquisitor rose and the two women smiled sadly at each other. There was a man waiting, sunburst across his heart.

“Madam the carriage is loaded and ready.”

Vivienne nodded. “Inquisitor, it has been an honor to serve you.”

Evelyn bowed. “Your Holiness.”

Without hugging, without speaking, the women said goodbye.

**

“Kadan, how many times are you going to read that book?”

Dorian flipped the page, he'd read “Incidents in the Life of an Elven Slave Girl” enough times to recite passages from it, but he needed to know it whole and unbroken, from memory. The morbid compulsion to know this woman's story and maybe somehow feel her suffering driving him to read it night after night and pester for more books on the subject. Skyhold's librarians were sick of him, 'No Ser Pavus we cannot get an original copy of the 'Book of Shartan' it is not in our budget.'

Well, he'd just have to have a conversation with Evelyn about the uses of Skyhold's budget, new uniforms for the scouts would just have to wait. _This_ was more important than that.

“Kadan?”

“Kadan!”

“What!”

The Iron Bull groaned, Dorian's scholarship on the subject matter was turning into a compulsion, an unhealthy one in his eyes. “Reading that book ain't gonna absolve you of any sins, Dor.”

“I know that! Don't you think I know that!” He snapped.

The qunari made a conciliatory gesture with his hands. “Easy tiger, no harm. Readin' a book informs you, enlightens you even, but it ain't gonna make you a better person either. That requires action.”

“I know that too! It's just...I don't know what it is, maybe you're right, maybe I need to go and _do._ ”

There was so much to do, so much work to be done. So many things to make up for. So many things to make right.

Bull cursed his overly large mouth. Ma'am left today, Solas was gone weeks ago. Dorian leaving too wouldn't surprise him, but it would hurt him, and now he just gave him the idea.

“Thinkin' about leaving too?” He said the words easily, evenly, as though his heart wouldn't break by the idea of him gone.

“What?” Dorian snapped the book closed. “Tired of me already?”

“You're the one who suggested goin' and doin' I was just asking.”

“You didn't answer the question amatus.”

Birds should fly free, especially ones as pretty as Dorian, but birds can't fly with a cage in the way. Iron Bull couldn't be that cage.

“I know.”

**

The meeting with Leliana took longer than he expected, the two of them bickering back and forth about what scouts should go where and no Jim cannot be sent to the Hissing Wastes, he’s actually a very valuable courier and soldier.

It was moonrise before he left the rookery, exhausted and still unsatisfied. Vivienne left him rattled; worrying him about the enemies he couldn’t see and hadn’t anticipated yet. He doubled the patrols on the battlements and sent several requisition forms to several Inquisition territories asking for more soldiers.

It’d mean more work for him and less time with Evelyn, he thought ruefully making his way to her quarters. Time spent in the field, training his men, running drills, conducting missions and time not spent holding and loving the woman he meant to make his wife.

He wanted perfection, she deserved it. But more than that, she deserved all of him. And it seemed now, with these new intangible threats, he wasn’t quite ready to give that. It needed to be right, he needed to be ready. He wanted to marry her, love her, have her when there wasn’t a need to protect her anymore. When he wouldn’t lie awake worrying about her safety, wondering when she was coming home. When he wouldn’t have to leave her, months at a time, overseeing keeps and investigating leads. When he could wake in the morning and choose the cloth instead of the metal, when he didn’t have to wake and go to war anymore.

He wanted just Cullen and Evelyn, not Inquisitor and Commander. He wanted no title save husband, and it seemed like now, that wasn’t going to happen.

Not yet.

So Cullen put his rings in their box, and put that box in a bigger box. And put that box in his desk, sealing it with a locking latch and a prayer.

Not yet. But soon.

But, never once would he stop loving her. Never once would he greet the day without her smile or her warmth pressed against him. He wouldn’t sleep without her murmured kisses, given sleepy and sated, after he brought her body and soul the joy he knew he could.

He would love her as though she were his wife until he could actually make good on the promise. He swore that to himself now as he knocked on the door to her chambers. He missed lunch and dinner, and when he went to see if she was possibly in Herald’s Rest having a nightcap with Dorian, the Tevinter shrugged and stated he hadn’t seen her since midday.

She conducted her business then ate alone, a little melancholy now after watching Vivienne’s carriage drive away. He saw that sadness in her eyes when he entered, still red and puffy around the edges.

“B.”

She was playing with her hair, some of the vines had loose curly ends, while others had blunted round ends where the hair had twisted back on itself, sealing the end of the vine. She played in the curly ends, pressing on the spirals, feeling them give.

Even though Vivienne was brutal on her scalp, no one before her had ever helped her take such good care of her hair. Her mother, Susanna, didn’t much care for it, hair or daughter, while her father Gareth, hated the style, insisting it made her looks savage and uncouth and not the lady she should be.

Vivienne loved her hair and desired to see it well kept. And something so simple had meant the world to the Inquisitor, an acceptance where she previously had none. Then beyond, with her style and her seriousness, her grace and power. Vivienne literally changed Evelyn’s life, showed her that there were women like her in the world, and they could be more than servants, whores, or nannies.

And she was gone, taking a little chunk of her heart with her to Val Royeaux.

Cullen took her in his arms and sought to banish that sadness.

His kiss warmed her, the fingers that gripped her pressed tighter. Sweet tongue gave way to impatient teeth, little sighs transformed into needy moans, cloth and armor gave way to bare flesh.

“Cullen.”

He dipped his fingers between her thighs, finding her wet and ready. He stroked her softly, idly almost, lazy and languid caresses serving no greater purpose than to stoke her fire hotter. His mouth and tongue sought hers as the candles burned low, she tasted like wine and salt and smelled like her hair oil. Vivienne must have done her hair before leaving.

She bucked against his hand, but his pace never increased, he brought her to the end of the world slowly, taking great pleasure in the curses she babbled as she begged for more.

“Please, right there, I’m so close, Cullen. Please. I’m so close.”

He hummed against her neck, tongue and stubble stimulating what was the most sensitive part on her body not between her legs. Whenever he kissed her there she screamed and moaned and writhed deliciously, causing her to twitch and ripple, sucking his fingers deeper inside of her.

“Please, fuck! Please.”

He took the pad of his fingers and swiped them against the creamy crown of her sex, as though wiping away a smudge of frosting from the corner her lip. The lightest touch, designed to heighten her pleasure not bring her to it, and it drove her wild.

Cullen enjoyed being an insufferable tease. He enjoyed the way her fingers tightened in his shoulders, the way her strong thighs quaked when she was so close to release. He enjoyed the retaliatory bites she peppered his neck with, and the Marcher curses she screamed when he denied her.

He enjoyed her begging.

“More, just like that you pretty little thing, beg for more.” He hissed, running that light touch against her over and over again, knowing exactly when to pull back, right when she was the closest.

“Please, please please! Cullen, fuck me please!”

He smiled. “As my lady commands.”

He dropped to her waist, dipping his tongue in her navel, promising with a few kitten licks what was to come. He was ragingly, painfully erect, desperate to bury himself within her and cool his fire in her wetness. But not yet. He wanted more, to make her brainless with bliss so she’d forget the sorrow of the day. So he could, at least for a little while, forget the box he left behind in his desk.

He kept insistent pressure at her pearl as he laid kisses on both thighs, ignoring the fingernails in his scalp urging him higher. He liked having his eyes on her when he feasted, loving the way her back bowed when he hit 'right there oh! right _there!'_

She flooded his ears with her delicious screaming, the heel digging into his back proof enough of her rapture. Yet he kept licking, light laps that had her bawling. He kept the leg on his shoulder, and shifted so that while he rose, the leg slid down so that her calf rested there instead of her thigh. She was splayed open, and still begging, greedy in her lust.

Unable to prolong his torture, Cullen plunged with a brutally loving snap of his hips, pushing to the deepest part of her. Her pleas choked off, her cries became wordless as he pumped himself within her, eyes torn between watching her beautiful face contort in a pleasure he granted her and keeping them closed because the pleasure she gave him was just too great.

He tossed his head back and to the side, kissing and biting her ankles and calves as she contracted around him, filled and stretched beautifully by him.

“Evelyn, Maker, yes, yes! Fuck.”

She cried out for him, imploring him breathlessly. “Cullen, come for me, come, please, Cullen.”

The pressure inside him released in hot spurts, Cullen stilled, completely unable to keep moving, already buried to the hilt inside his beautiful lady. He called her name in broken pieces, head and neck locked, eyes unfocused on the ceiling before bringing them back to her.

“Maker….” He mumbled, slipping free. Her lion crashed beside her, she herself still a little dazed. She yelped when he caught her hair under him, and he could only employ a token effort to raise up and release her, murmuring apology by kissing her tender scalp.

“What brought that about?” Utterly sated, her question had a slur to it.

“Need I a reason to fuck you senseless?” Cullen questioned snuggling up to her.

“No, but whatever I did, I wanna do it again ya know?”

“Oh no Inquisitor, I can’t have you getting used to this. Expect plain old missionary for the next month.”

“Asshole.” She muttered sleepily.

“Lion.” He corrected, pinching her on the meatiest part of her shoulder.

She squealed and giggled, bringing just a little bit more light into his world.

Light that turned to darkness in his dreams.

Vivienne’s words echoed down stony halls, which made no sense because he was in an open field, surrounded by rocks, holding a body still and lifeless.

He didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t need to. He knew the weight of her, having held her so many times. He knew the curve of her, what dip went where. Except there was _too much_ of a dip in her torso, nothing where there should be something. Cullen kept his eyes closed, but his ears were open, and he heard the accusations.

“We should have…”

“How could we expect….”

“Caught unawares….”

“I will personally see to your destruction…”

This was a gentle nightmare, even if such a thing defied explanation. He didn’t startle awake, he just woke, eyes snapping open in the darkness. Evelyn was wrapped around his back, the big spoon in the drawer, nakedness pressed against him, seamless.

He took a few seconds to breathe, focused firmly on the body next to him, reminding him for an innumerable time that he wasn’t alone, and that he needn’t be afraid.

She was here.

He was safe.

 

 


	2. You Will Be The Death of Me

**Three Months Later**

Cullen needed a shave but he unfortunately left his razor and foam back in his quarters. He rose earlier than he needed to, intending to get back to his room and eliminate at least some of his seemingly endless and permanent stubble.

“But I like you scruffy,” Evelyn groused.

“I know.” He grinned and rubbed his face in her neck, scratching her with his beard. Evelyn sighed and laughed, feebly struggling against the scruffy onslaught.

“Does my lady not like her lion’s mane?” He teased.

“Get off, get off. Maker, I love you, but if you don’t stop I’ma…”

He pinched her bottom and her threat dissolved into another squeal.

He only stopped when she was breathless and panting with laughter. “Go back to sleep, sweetling, it’s still early.”

“Oh I intend to.”

“You know we have a meeting at nine bells.”

“Yeah, and?”

Cullen smiled giving a little disapproving shake of his head. After months of a so-called vacation which mostly consisted of the Inquisitor dodging her counselors (save one) and generally _not inquisiting_ , Evelyn was finding it hard to get back to their normal routine of strategy meetings and being the Inquisitor again. She walked him to the door, wrapped up in the bedsheet, and nothing else. It was endearingly sexy, no doubt exactly her intention, the white sheet set against her dark skin tempting Cullen to shuck the whole shaving plan and put the Inquisition off for yet another day.

But he thought better of it, deciding a moment’s dalliance wouldn’t be worth the heartache of extra work later. She kissed him at the door, winking goodbye, letting the sheet slip just a little bit, revealing a daring stripe of skin, hoping to wordlessly bribe the Commander of scruff back to bed.

“Foul temptress,” He muttered before succumbing to just the tiniest bit of temptation, seizing her by the sheet, pulling her back to him for one last rough kiss.

“Maker help me but you are the worst desire demon.” He grumbled between kisses.

She moaned back, carding her fingers through his hair. “Then smite me O’ mighty templar ser.”

Cullen groaned, pulling away, a promise of ‘more, later’ burning in his stare. He retreated from her, summoning all his will to turn and leave, closing the door behind him, chuckling softly to himself.

“Maker that woman.”

Lost in his reverie, he tripped over the Iron Bull, the qunari squatting in the stairwell leading up to the Inquisitor’s door.

“Maker’s balls Bull. What in the Void…it’s six in the morning. Six! What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been patient. I waited. I watched. You promised me a dragon.”

“I thought she pulled a tooth for you from…”

“Doesn’t count! I was unconscious!”

“Look, Iron Bull, now’s not the best…”

“Nope.”

Bull shoved a paper into the commander’s face, a report. “This came in this morning.”

“Have you been stalking the rookery for news of dragons?” Cullen accused, eyes scanning the report for the important bits. Seems as though a Ferelden Frostback had been tearing up crops and villages in the lower Hinterlands.

“Yes.” Bull answered unashamedly.

“The report says it’s damaged a season’s worth of crops. The Inquisitor can’t ignore this.”

“Nope. And I hear you’re having a war meeting in a couple of hours, so let me make this easy for you. Me. Boss. You. Krem. It’s a surprise for Dorian so he _cannot_ come. We take down this dragon, I get out of your hair.”

Iron Bull pulled on one of Cullen’s curls, knocked loose from his early morning activities. Cullen batted away his friend’s hand with an annoyed sigh.

“I don’t like it. It’s a dragon. She’s never bothered with them before.”

“Yeah well she can’t let this one go now. And you promised.”

**

She was late, yawning as she entered the war room, offering sleepy hellos to her councilors. Leliana giggled, Josephine rolled her eyes, and Cullen just smiled feeling partially proud that he was the reason for her lethargy.

“A dragon?” Evelyn seemed to wake fully after Cullen relayed the report Iron Bull shoved down his throat earlier.

“Yes.” Cullen explained. “It’s causing disruption in the growing season. Skyhold and our camps rely on the foodstuffs from these villages to get us through the winter. Entire fields are scorched, half the harvest gone.”

“I do not understand why you’ve let this dragon problem go so long unaddressed.” Josephine questioned somewhat severely.

“Because they weren’t hurting anyone!” Evelyn angrily interjected.

“Quite,” the Ambassador continued. “But this will not do. You must act now. You can no longer afford to laze about, Inquisitor. Corypheus may be gone, but your duties are still legion.”

Evelyn deflated a little bit, chastened by Josephine’s reproach. Despite Vivienne’s nebulous warning of doom, Evelyn cherished this time of no expectations or worries or fighting. For a while she felt like her old self again, pulling old skin around her like a comfortable blanket once left long forgotten in the bottom of a chest. Josephine meant well, but Ambassador Montilyet always had the best interests of the Inquisition at heart, even if those interests clashed with the heart of its Inquisitor. She would do the duty asked, she would be more, she would wear the crown, but it sat a little too heavy.

“Will that be all?” She asked quietly.

“Yes Inquisitor.”

“Yes Herald.”

“If I may, my lady…”

She remembered when he first said those words, before she had a crown but not before the same heavy weight settled on unsteady shoulders. He said them to her now, proving yet again how wonderful he was, reminding her once more that, to him, she went beyond her title.

He was pleased by the grin she tried to hide, taking note of her slightly wrinkled nose and pursed lips, all the signs he learned long ago of her colorless blush. He couldn’t feel the heat or see the tingle in her cheeks but he knew they were there as he spoke his love without saying the words.

“Yes Cullen.”

“If it please you, I would like to accompany you to take down the dragon, I made a promise to the Iron Bull and I’d like to keep it. Also, I know the area well, and it will give me the opportunity to recruit more for our ranks personally.”

“Nothing would please me greater.”

**

“Hurry up!” Bull whined while Evelyn saddled Jackson. “We gotta go before Dorian...”

“Before I what?”

Bull went off on a tirade of qunlat curses, causing Krem to blush furiously and Evelyn and Cullen (the only non Qunlat speakers in the room) to shift about nervously wondering what in the Void was going on.

“Chief thought it best if you eh…stay behind. You know, to protect you.” Krem volunteered, trying his best though the excuse was flimsy.

“After three whole months of loafing about, the first action you try to tackle, you do so without me? I don’t know whether to be offended…or to simply be offended.” Dorian pouted, inexcusably bratty as was his way. “Furthermore with our hobo apostate fucked off into Fade-knows-where quite literally, and our Knight-Enchantress similarly departed, I am the only one with any kind of magic to keep the lot of you standing upright. In short, you will not leave me behind.”

Bull groaned, his attempt at surprising his lover utterly ruined.

“Fine.” Bull spit. “You can come.”

“Hmph,” Dorian chuffed. “I’m getting the distinct feeling I’m not wanted. If you’re going to be nasty about it, maybe I will just stay behind.”

“Andraste’s flaming ass you two, get on your fucking horses and let’s go.” Evelyn commanded.

**

Dorian spent the entire ride in a foul mood, while Krem, Evelyn, and Cullen tried to keep the atmosphere a little less than hostile. As they drew nearer to the dragon’s claimed territory, she saw the evidence of its presence scorched into the earth. Fields that should have been green with the fresh shoots of wheat and corn were instead charred black. And farmers who had fields lucky enough to be spared the dragon's wrath were either frantically rooting seeds in the soil hoping for a late harvest or letting their fields lie fallow altogether.

Cullen made a disapproving noise, sucking his teeth. “This isn’t good. It’s far too late to be thinking of planting now. These crops will freeze before they are mature enough to harvest. And anything planted is already burned up.”

“Are we gonna be in trouble?” Krem asked.

“With this? There will be lean times. Though if we cannot beat the dragon here today the situation will worsen, putting us in peril of starving.”

While Krem and Cullen discussed the options available to them to alleviate Skyhold’s food problem, Evelyn inserted herself between the two sour lovers.

“Kiss and make up.” B cooed, poking Dorian in the ribs with her elbow.

Dorian harrumphed dramatically sticking his nose in the air.

“Ass.” Bull muttered.

“Yes, a magnificent one, thank you, glad you noticed.”

“Is that what this is about? I haven’t paid enough attention to you?” The Iron Bull seethed, setting his Abyssal Hangtooth screeching with similar disapproval.

The Iron Bull owned his deficit in attention, making some kind of half-hearted attempt to inoculate himself against the eventuality of Dorian leaving. It failed, Bull always and ever returning to the mage. He was a stranger in a strange land, even with his Chargers. He didn’t feel like a qunari and he never felt like a Vashoth, even after losing the Qun. He felt nothing, loose, an open wound needing a stitch. Dorian tied him up, literally and figuratively, his fire sealing frayed threads that loneliness, isolation, _madness_ would have pulled loose.

“You should well know I am a delicate flower requiring full sunlight at all times. I haven’t so much as seen a rain cloud out of you. Preferring late nights with the Chargers and early mornings doing Maker knows what. And, get this Sorora, when I finally gather the stones to confront him about it I catch him sneaking— _sneaking—out_ of Scout Harding’s quarters at a scandalous hour in the morning and you know what he tells me?”

“Dorian it was nothing!”

“Precisely! That it was nothing. He doesn’t have the balls to just tell me the truth!”

“I got plenty of balls for ya right here!” Iron Bull snorted making a motion to grab at his crotch.

“Whoa whoa. Children please.” Evelyn gestured for peace between the two snarling men. “I’ve never seen you two like this.”

“You don’t see much of anything these days beyond a certain someone’s backside.”

“I’m right here Dorian!” Cullen growled.

“I know, that’s why I said it!”

“Really? This is how it’s gonna be? First day out together in months and y’all bicker like fucking children. I shoulda brought Vi...nevermind." 

Bull and Dorian continued to argue.

“If I say it’s nothing, you should trust me enough to believe it’s nothing.”

“Something I’d have a much easier time doing if you just told me _why_. You always get like this, clamming up, putting on your diamondback face while you read everyone else. ”

“I can’t damnit, not yet.”

“Trying to find the right way to break it to me? Changing the rules again are we?” Dorian hissed and spat, a true venomous snake, anger and spite unfurling like the hood of a cobra, a defense mechanism to cover up the hurt.

“There’s nothing to change. You’ll see.”

Country field gave way to broken cliffs and the stench of burned grass and flesh intensified.

“Boss, it’s gotta be close.”

“Yeah,” Evelyn agreed, decidedly less excited by the notion.

The dragon lay dozing in a cradle of rock formed by the outstretched limbs of rocky hills and infant mountains. Krem, Iron Bull, and Cullen formed the vanguard while Evelyn and Dorian provided ranged support. But before the advancing guard could ambush the mother, a clutch of her dragonlings ambushed them.

The great gold beast screamed, startled awake by the screeching of her young before taking to the air, gouts of fire raining down from above.

Iron Bull whooped and hollered, Evelyn and the rest just screamed. Evelyn hated dragons. Since Haven, and the arrival of the red lyrium dragon, she avoided them at all costs. Partly because her arrows were near useless against a dragon’s tough hide, and mostly because she was just plain afraid of them.

“You don’t hunt a dragon like you hunt a lion or a bear da’len.” Assan counseled her once. “The magic within them is older than the bones of the world. You would do well not to trifle with them lest you rouse the anger of gods far older and more powerful than yours or mine. Hunt them only if you have to, and then _only if you have to_.”

She judged she never had to as they kept empty ranges, nuisances to shepherds and lost druffalo, but not much more than that. The lyrium dragon and the destruction that blighted thing wrought upon Haven and Adamant further tempered her resolve to steer clear of them, avoiding them to the point of negligence as she could see now.

She constructed her nest from the ruins of some unfortunate camp, the bleached bones of its former occupants her bedding. Its children screamed, snarled, and slashed at the attackers, tearing easily through Dorian’s barrier magic and even easier through the armor underneath.

While the warriors dealt with the threats on the ground, Evelyn and Dorian were the only ones equipped to deal with the threat in the air. Arrows and magic buzzed harmlessly by the flying malevolence as the pair had to work to avoid hurled fireballs from above and balls of acid spit from below.

“We gotta find a way to get this thing on the ground Boss.”

“I’m up for suggestions!” Red arrows singing from gold and red bow.

“We either gotta take her down or make her come down Chief.”

“Whatever you do,” Cullen thundered, slashing back at another dragonling. “Do it quickly!”

“I know how to make her come down!”

Iron Bull started to climb one of the hills that flanked the dragon’s open lair, scrambling over the husks and stumps of burned trees and rock that jarred loose when he grabbed them.

“Vishante Kaffas! Iron Bull! What are you…” Dorian’s curse was cut off with a terrified shriek as the dragon bathed Iron Bull’s perch in flame.

“Chief!”

Krem tried to scale up the hill after him but Cullen couldn’t handle the horde of dragonlings on his own and he had to double back to reinforce him. Bull stood at the top of the hill screaming and bellowing all kinds of foul curses in Qunlat, Tevene, and Common.

“C’mere you nug-faced shit! Boss, I need your aim.”

“Dorian! Support Krem and Cullen on the ground, I’ll go help Iron Bull!”

Dorian acknowledged the order and sent her off with a barrier for extra protection. B scrambled up the hill, thankful the smaller drakes were distracted.

“Boss, I need you to aim right there. Plant an arrow right up that things ass, when she turns to attack, I’ll jump and bring that bitch down.”

“Bull, you’re insane.”

“I know. Do it!”

The Iron Bull was literally asking to hit the asshole of a dragon mid-flight and from too many yards away. But the fire it rained on her allies would set the whole valley alight if they didn’t stop it. Evelyn knelt and kissed her right palm, her luck still resting in its harness, praying to the Lady for a lucky shot. She nocked an arrow and drew. She focused, reaching for the power of the anchor with her mind. Her marked hand flared bright green, magic energy flowing from her left hand, down the bow and into her right, igniting the arrow in the power of the Fade.

“Shit Boss, whendidja learn to do that!”

The Fade Arrow flew, guided by her aim and her magic and her luck. It struck the beast right where Bull wanted it to and it screamed, reeling in the air before veering straight towards them, mouth open wide, flame bubbling in the back of its throat.

“Oh fuck!”

“A little too good with that aim Boss!”

From the ground, the last of the dragonlings fell. The two warriors and the mage looked up to see the creature bear down on the hill where Iron Bull and Evelyn stood. Its mouth opened in a roar, a jet of flame gushed out.

“Evelyn!”

“Chief!”

“Amatus!”

No matter where they dodged that hill would be completely bathed in bone melting fire. The Iron Bull picked up the Inquisitor, lifted her in the air as though she weighed nothing, and threw her off the hill. Then he jumped, coiled powerful legs and leapt into the air even as the boots on his feet caught fire. The dragon passed too close, brought low by the Boss’s magical shot, bring it just in reach. The qunari landed on the thing’s head, one hand catching it by its horns and his feet finding purchase in its open mouth. Wielding his two handed axe with just one, he brought the blade down on the beast’s neck. The strike wasn’t strong enough to cleave head from body but it got damn close. When her head dropped, Bull dropped, both bodies plummeting. Her wings faltered and the beast fell from the air, crashing to the rocks below with an earth shaking thud, swirling up a cloud of dust and smoke.

When the dust settled, Cullen found Evelyn cursing in the dirt, clutching at a very obvious broken arm.

Dorian stilled, frightened mute when Iron Bull didn’t immediately emerge from the twisted heap of the dead dragon. She landed on her stomach, great tail narrowly missing Krem by inches.

“Chief! Where the hell are you, you heavy sack of shit. If you’re dead…”

The men heard laughing and saw two horns poke up from the Dragon’s front. One leg was badly burned, he favored it, limping slightly. But there was a grin wider than the dragon’s wingspan plastered on Bull’s face as he held in his hand the largest fang he could pull from the beast’s mouth.

“Amatus!” Dorian ran, fear laden heart lightening if just a little bit. When he reached his lover he placed two hands on his massive shoulders, but before he could inquire after Bull’s safety, the qunari stopped him, kissed him, then took his axe and broke the fang apart into two pieces.

“I’m sorry for the secrets and I’m sorry I made you worry. I thought I’d be alright, that you leaving wouldn’t bother me, but they called me liar in another life, and I’m not immune to the ones I tell myself. So here kadan, a dragon’s tooth, split in two. So that no matter how far apart life takes us, we’re always together.”

Iron Bull placed the bigger half of the broken tooth into one of the chest pockets of Dorian’s robe. The one closest to the center of his chest, his heart. The mage was speechless for but a moment before an imperceptible expression passed across his face. He took Iron Bull’s head in his hands, brought him close for a kiss.

Then took his knee and jammed it into his balls. Iron Bull crumpled, bent in half, and fell.

“What in the fucking Void were you doing taking down a dragon like that! You could have died!” Dorian screeched, falling to the ground with him before kissing Iron Bull for real this time. “Don’t you ever do that again! Festis bei umo canavarum!”

The Iron Bull chuckled, clutching at his balls, hurt far worse by Dorian’s knee than any injury inflicted by the dragon.

“Yeah, I love you too kadan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, accusations? You may always find me at mirabai0821.tumblr.com


	3. Thunder on the Mountain

“So that's what you were worried about? That I would leave?”

His question passed by unheeded, possibly unheard. Krem reined his horse back to fall between the Commander and the Lady Herald offering the Bull and Dorian a measure of privacy.

Dorian opened his mouth to question again. “You never said anything, about whether you had grown tired of me or not.”

“Dorian,” The Iron Bull pulled his Hangtooth to a stop then turned the beast to face Dorian, still jittery and bouncy on his plain forder, the only animal with the temperament easy enough to handle Dorian’s terrible equestrian skills.

The mage talked _too_ much at times while the Iron Bull knew the worth of economy of expression. He chose his words and sentences and inflections with the same depth of care as Dorian chose robes for the day; careful not to clash, or offend, or confuse his intent. He never said five words when three would do and he always held something back, the Ben-Hassrath in him never permitting him to bare whole truth.

That skill faltered now under Dorian’s wounded gaze.

“I want you to stay with me.”

Dorian and his horse started. “Well,” his wit scrambled searching for a proper retort finding nothing suitable except stammering, embarrassed, heart-searing silence. Bull’s love was obvious, intent and meaning infused with his every action. His love was understood, unspoken, but never ever once expressed in such plain and devastating terms. It was one thing to know, another thing entirely to hear it spoken so simply.

The rules changed.

“But I know you can’t. Not forever anyway. So yeah, I was worried.”

“Amatus, The Iron Bull, I’m not going anywhere. Not anytime soon.”

“I know that, it’s the ‘anytime soon’ part that gets me.”

“You could always…”

“No I couldn’t.”

And they both knew that.

“So what do you want to do?”

“Love you while I still can.”

**

They rode back together, all ails healed—in the body anyway, broken dragon tooth resting in their respective pockets (the ones that weren’t ripped useless) for Dagna to get her hands on later.

B’s arm was in a sling, broken and beyond Dorian’s magic to correct. He tried and failed miserably to set the bone with his limited healing skills, serving to aggravate the fracture rather than set it right. Krem had to fashion the sling, and Evelyn was forced to ride home slower than she wanted for fear of jostling the injury too much.

Slow was the only pace they could maintain considering they were stuck on a narrow mountain behind a caravan of covered wagons, driven by some grizzled folk all too pleased to take their time.

Twelve carts, riding insufferably slow through the twisting mountain road that cut through the Frostbacks, a sheer drop on one side and a wall of mountain on the other. A well-travelled road if not perilous at times. The merchants were heading in the same direction as the dragonslayers, done with their travels in Ferelden and on to ply wares in Orlais. The merchants were sparsely guarded considering its size, one or two armed soldiers for every two carts, walking closer to the drivers than the wares.

“As I live and breathe!” Dorian hailed. He jumped down from his horse, cutting through the wagons and approached the head of the caravan. The leader was a grizzled looking man with a pretty elven woman riding double with him. He smiled tightly but offered no greeting in reply, his halted horse stopped up the rest of the caravan and Evelyn whined. “Dorian! I wanna go home!”

Unphased Dorian continued. “I recognize your clothing. You are Tevinter merchants! Come now! Let me see your wares! I pray to the Maker and whatever gods can hear that you have some true Vinum Ignis in one of these carts.”

Dorian reached to pull back a tarp and six swords, two staves, and a dagger were drawn on him immediately.

“These wares are for our employer,” The grizzled man said tersely, no hint of Imperium in his accent. “He has paid good money to us to see them to him safely. Step back, Es stercus!”

“Put your toys down boys and girls or I’ll take ‘em away.” Iron Bull dropped from his mount. Krem and Cullen too.

If a fight broke out with her broken limb B was useless with bow or dagger. But she could ride one handed, no handed even. She remained on Jackson, ready to trample anyone who got too close.

“Come now, let’s give these southerners a lesson in Imperium hospitality. Surely such insults aren’t necessary for a few casks of wine and oil.”

Great thing about Dorian, he loved to push a boundary. It’ll probably be the very thing that kills him one day. So even though they threatened him with magic and steel against touching the wagon, he did so anyway. Pulling back the tarp to reveal not oil jugs,

But living flesh.

Unwashed, bound, caged, living flesh.

“Serviati!” Dorian screamed and reached for his staff.

The slaver guard closest to him lunged, steel flashing in the late day sun. Dorian struck him with the head of his staff, hard enough to crack his attacker’s jaw. He swung again, this time with magic, and the jaw exploded.

Half the carts lurched forward, their horses breaking into a panicked run. A pair of drivers leaped from one of the carts, the slaves still trapped in their cages as the wild horses slipped and faltered on the narrow mountain path, horse, cart, and human cargo tumbling down the mountain to death.

Another cart, driven by a pair of slaves chained to their seats, tried to calm their animals, but the screech of battle and the arcing sing of magic scared them too badly to be tamed, another cart was lost to mountain side.

“We have to stop the carts!” Krem bellowed loud and angry, lunging viciously for the closest soldier-at-arms. His strike cut the woman in half and she fell with a blood choked scream.

Dorian lunged for the nearest cart, striking the lock from the cage and the chains that held its drivers in place. They poured out, a flood of humans and elves, running wildly to avoid sword blow and magic fire. Some ducked under the carts. Others still fled, mindless of direction, bare feet sliced bloody on the rocky path.

“Wait. Wait! Opperior!” They didn’t mind heed him, figuring one Tevinter was as bad as all. Dorian watched in horror as some ran right off the cliffside.

Others jumped, death preferable to anything else.

Bull covered Dorian as he worked to release the rest of the slaves from their cages. Grimy, newly liberated hands snatched for the nearest guard. He screamed, absorbed by the horde, the crunch of bone and squelch of blood rising over the din of fists and cursing.

Cullen stood between Jackson, B, and the attackers, shield raised, blocking dagger and arrow.

“Evelyn! Stay behind me!” Cullen shouted, but no one answered, the Inquisitor already charging off on Jackson, chasing down the leader of the group who sprinted away when they were discovered. The elven woman behind him started wiggling and crying in Tevene.

“Suppetia! Suppetia!”

The grizzled man had a head start and a clear path. Evelyn maneuvered Jackson through the fighting, the emptying carts, and the bodies to head after him.

“Up! Go!” Evelyn commanded and surefooted Jackson veered up the mountain wall, more goat than hart, to avoid the rest of the obstacles, charging down onto unblocked path.

Trevelyans were horsemen, though more breeders than riders in recent memory. All Gareth’s children knew the command of a rein but none of her siblings could ride the way she could. Under Assan’s hand, if it ran on four legs and was meant to bear a human’s weight, Evelyn could tame it.

On Jackson, she could chase down wind.

“Jackson! Kya! Ha!” They raced through the narrow pass her hart gaining on the man, her good arm reaching for the crying woman.

“Let go!” She cried, switching to Tevene. “Mitto!”

The woman shook her head, too frightened of falling to make an attempt to free herself.

“Jackson! Tear!”

So ordered the hart swung its head toward the galloping horse, intending to catch the flank on his massive horns. The grizzled man spurred his horse harder to escape, reaching for the hands clasped about his waist.

The elven woman screamed when the grizzled man took a dagger and sliced at her hands. She held fast and he sliced again, severing a finger. Unable to hold, the woman let go, flying from the back of the horse and into Jackson’s path.

“Shit!”

Jackson reared, swerving up the mountainside again to avoid trampling the woman. Her path was still clear, another burst of speed from him and she could run down the grizzled man. But the woman’s tears moved her, she pulled Jackson to a stop and turned him back.

“Kneel.” Jackson knelt and with her good arm, B pulled the woman into her saddle.

“Gratias, gratias, gratias,” The woman babbled over and over again, burying her dirty face in Evelyn’s shoulder.

Jackson bore them back to the group, the fighting over and done by the time they arrived.

“Did you catch any of the slavers?”

“Shame really, Sorora, they all just happened to die.” Dorian snarled arriving with Iron Bull, Krem, and Cullen sporting an arrow in the shoulder—another wound Dorian couldn’t quite seem to fix.

“Maker’s blood Cullen!” She instructed the woman to stay upon the mount while she saw to her beloved. “Are you alright?”

“It got mostly the meat, stings like you wouldn’t believe though. Tell me, we brought Dorian to heal and he hasn’t done very much of that has he.”

“I’m the damn necromancer!” Dorian shouted indignantly. “I got the basics and aught else!”

“We killed them all,” Krem reported. “There were about 100 people between all of the carts. The ones that didn’t fall anyway. From what they say, they’re from the Imperium and sold here.”

“Slavery is forbidden in the south.” Cullen offered confused.

“Yes, but a slave is still cheaper than hiring and paying a servant.” Evelyn answered. “That’s probably why they’re heading to Orlais. Slavers are cheaper than the elven servants they keep there. Possibly profitable too. Maker’s fuck, how long has this been going on? Right under my fucking nose.”

Krem placed a careful yet reassuring hand the Inquisitor. “It’s not your fault your Worship. There was no way to know.”

“We have to see to the injured. Dorian your skills, such as they are, you think they can help?”

“I’ll try.”

Most of the rescued were simply bruised, dehydrated, and malnourished, suffering from the rigors of spending days on end chained together, crammed and stifled in wagons. Not one of them spoke the common tongue and Evelyn and Cullen had to rely on the other three to parse out the story of their journey.

They were sold in Minrathous, placed in ships and sent south. The caravan wound all throughout Ferelden stopping at keeps and castles here and there, the people sold to the idle wealthy lord or lady looking for under the table cheap labor. The bulk of them, though, would be sold in Orlais where demand for elven servitude was highest.

Dorian seethed as the woman who clung to Evelyn, Seraphina, retold the story of her auction and capture. The leader, a man she simply knew as Dominus, had taken far too much of a liking to her, intending to keep her as his personal slave once the rest of his cargo was unloaded.

Some of the elves cowered from him, knowing what he was just by the way he looked and spoke. He wasn’t a magister but he reeked of Imperium privilege. One or two of them cursed violently at him shoving him away even as he tried to soothe their wounds. They preferred to suffer than be aided by one of the thrice cursed masters.

Krem helped as best he could, hollow hearted, remembering his lost family. His father sold himself into slavery, cursing him with the false name. The price they asked, he couldn’t pay. So they paid it themselves with branded flesh and sacrifice. He soothed them as best he could, learned their names, and bandaged them when the potions ran out. He knew Dorian was a good man, he knew he was good for the Boss and the Lady Herald, but just this once, Krem hated Dorian just a little bit. Men like him were the reason his family fell apart.

“Hey…Hey Evelyn.”

The Inquisitor stilled, The Iron Bull never addressed her by her given name. “You might want to come see this.”

The last cart in the caravan was driven by a boy, no older than 13 or 14 years, bright blue eyes but he stared dully. He was sun struck and freckled, the flesh of a boy used to the outdoors.

“What is it?”

“I was coming to cut the chains off these kids, but they have no chains.”

The cage was filled with 12 children, varying ages and sizes. Five boys, three girls, and four so wan and dirty their gender couldn’t be determined at first or second glance. They sat quietly, evenly distributed in their cage while the boy who drove them sat placidly, reins in his lap as though waiting for the next order.

“What is your name?”

Evelyn smiled and the boy did not return it, answering her in a flat voice. “My name is Joseph.”

“Okay Joseph.” Evelyn climbed into the seat next to him. “My name is Evelyn and you’re safe now.”

“Thank you.”

She cast a worried glance to Cullen who stared shocked. “Inquisitor, these children…”

“I know.”

She turned back to Joseph, reaching for his hair with her good arm. “May I?”

He didn’t acknowledge or refuse her, staring into her eyes yet beyond them as she wiped away his dirty and greasy mouse brown hair.

His forehead was bare.

Evelyn let loose a breath of relief. “Thank the Maker.”

“If you are searching for a brand, you will not find one.” Joseph answered.

“What?”

“It is as you guess. I am, all of us. Are Tranquil.”

“That is not possible. You have no brand!” Cullen protested.

“It is possible.” A girl stood and bent short bloody fingers around the bars of her cage. “I remember laughing. I don’t laugh anymore.”

“How? What happened to you? Why are you here? Why are you in a caravan of slaves?”

“My family.” Joseph answered. “I broke a vase with my mind. There were no Circles to send me to. All of them had fallen in the war. I scared my mother and father but they loved me. They didn’t smother me in my sleep the way our neighbors did when their daughter started throwing fire.”

Dorian cursed in Tevene, muttering something about hypocrisy and barbarity.

“A man came, he called himself Dominus. He promised my mother and father that he could cure me, rid me of my magic. It would take long and it would be expensive yet once it was done he would send me back. They gave him money and they gave him me. He rid me of my magic, but he did not send me back.”

“Tranquility requires a brand of lyrium to…none of you have a mark.”

Joseph didn’t respond.

“I heard.” The bloody fingered girl spoke again. “The guards were speaking. ‘We are easy.’ They said.”

Cullen shuddered, the wince aggravating the wound in his shoulder. Meredith kept a Tranquil as an assistant, Elsa. he remembered how Meredith crowed about her organizational skills and single mindedness, speaking about the woman as though she were no more than a drafthorse, imploring that he get one for himself. The memory and the thought made his stomach rot.

“It makes sense,” Cullen answered at last. “A slave with no desire for freedom, and a child too. You could get long years of service from a Tranquil slave.”

“But why? Why! Why would their parents…?”

“My mama said I was cursed by the Maker.” A boy called from within the cage.

“Magic exists to serve man.” Said another.

“They were afraid I’d be possessed.”

“Boss, with no Circles to go to where do you send them? You keep them and pray no demons come to visit? You lock them up to set the barn on fire by accident? You abandon them? Then all of a sudden your prayers are answered, and this guy comes claiming he can save your kid. He takes their money for his services then takes more money when he sells them again. This guy sounds like a businessman, capitalizing on fear and opportunity.”

“These children, these people are not a business!” Dorian screeched.

“I think the Altus doth protest too much.” Krem muttered, lashing out.

“What was that?” Dorian wheeled on the Iron Bull’s lieutenant.

“Look, you don’t have to get all indignant, put on a show to make yourself look different from the rest of slavers.”

“Krem.” Iron Bull said, a hint of warning growling in the word.

“Nah, Chief. Men like him are the reason this happens. I always wondered what they’d do when they’d run out of elves. Seems like Tranquil child slaves are the answer.” Krem spat angrily.

“Wait a Maker fucked minute!”

“Ceasum mundi! Enough!” Evelyn bellowed, wincing from the pain in her arm. Iron Bull and Cullen could hear the audible click of two sets of teeth snapping shut quickly. “I don’t know about you fucks but my arm’s broken, Cullen’s got a hole in his, we’ve got 100 plus people and _TRANQUIL CHILDREN_ who need food, shelter, and a chance to feel like a living being again, and we’re losing daylight because y’all wanna have a moral fucking dust up! You can argue about it when we get to Skyhold. Not before.” She sighed heart shredded by bright eyes in a flat stare. “Pick a cart, get in it, and let’s go fucking home.”

Krem skulked away, choosing the wagon furthest from Dorian. They were so crammed, stuffed full, a few of the healthier refugees were asked to walk to alleviate space.

Joseph remained with his cart, his charges quiet while the adults screamed.

“Thank you Sorora.” Dorian muttered.

“Don’t thank me, that wasn’t for you. Krem’s right, people like you have a lot to answer for what they’ve done or what they’ve allowed to happen.” Dorian deflated instantly, even his moustache seemed to straighten and sadden. “But people like you can change it too. Stop it, make it better.”

“I can’t change hundreds of years’ worth of history Evelyn.”

“Yes you can. I remember hundreds of days ago you barely cared. Now look at you.”

“Krem hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you specifically, just what you represent. You two are looking out different sides of the same prison. You’ve got more in common than you think.”

“I know.”

“So get to know him. Don’t just tell him you’re different. Prove it to him. And while you’re at it, learn some better spells okay.” She gestured to Bull’s ugly dragon fire burns and Cullen’s pierced shoulder. “Those could have been a lot worse.”

Dorian nodded, taking up the empty seat beside his amatus, the dragon tooth resting near his heart a solemn charge to earn it.

Awkwardly, Evelyn climbed into one of the wagons, gripping the packhorse reins with her one good hand.

“Beloved,” Cullen’s arm was slung up too. The arrow was gone but the pain, that lingered. He ambled in the wagon next to her, having given up his mount to a couple of children, orphans who, once their chains were broken wouldn’t let go of the other’s hands.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

Cullen shrugged as best he could. “At least I didn’t take that arrow to the knee.”

Evelyn snorted, “Your adventuring days would be over.”

He watched her maneuver the cart with her one hand, turning back every now and again to check on their passengers. Some huddled together, seeking the comfort of the familiar. Others tried to press themselves into every available empty space, creating an individualized bubble regaining personal space and boundaries lost when they were all shackled together.

It hurt him to watch their tear and dirt stained faces, some twisted in the grimace of permanent sadness, weeping quietly, or simply staring beyond numb and lifeless like the Tranquil children pulling up the rear. He wanted to help, the Inquisition was formed to protect, to help. But this might be beyond their powers.

“I let him get away.”

“What?”

“Dominus. The leader. He’s the only who got away. He could have been the one who…those children, Maker help me, how could you do that to children? How?”

“They were afraid. Their parents. They were trying to help somehow.”

“Don’t you fucking dare try to defend...!”

“I’m not, Maker, I’m not! Just try to maybe see. You’re good Maker fearing Chantry people. You’ve been told all your life magic is dangerous, that at any time a demon could possess a mage and tear your family apart. So you either learn to hate magic or fear it. Your child manifests their magic and you have no place to send them. No place where they could be safe, you from them and them from demons. Then this man comes with this promise.”

“So you sell your child?!”

“I imagine there are families all over Ferelden, weeping right now because they’ve heard no word of their son or daughter. Let’s get them back to Skyhold and find those families.”

“Ok Cullen, Ok.”

“And the rest, the elves. Where do you mean to take them?” he asked.

“That a trick question?”

“No. The dragon is defeated but the problem remains. We don’t have room or the stores…”

“I know.”

“There’s an alienage in Redcliffe….”

“No…”

“We can’t. We won’t be able to…”

“I know.”

“So…”

“I don’t care, they _all_ come.”

Cullen sighed and kissed her, his good hand helping hers direct the cart.

Together they made one pair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please excuse my bastardized google translated Latin masquerading poorly as Tevene.   
> Also, I am very very VERY sorry. There was an opportunity there, I took it. Yes the joke is like 5 years old and a million times overdone. I'm SORRY okay!


	4. Makin' Deals with Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehh why not?

In weeks following the destruction of the Ferelden Frostback, Skyhold became a tent city. The refugees, as they were known, lived in the tents usually reserved for the Commander’s soldiers and Leliana’s scouts, setting up in the empty space of the practice fields—forcing Cullen to train his new recruits in other cramped places or outside the keep altogether.

Enchanter Fiona took charge of the Tranquil children, collected their names and hometowns, writing letters to parents informing them that their child was alive. Families journeyed to Skyhold, no doubt eager to have beloved child returned, joy that shattered when the truth was revealed.

Evelyn and Fiona, family by family, worked together to convey the news. Mothers broke down, every last one, sobbing into Serah’s, Melita’s, Chandra’s, into Oswald’s, Ramon’s, Faahad’s, and Da’Hallan’s necks begging forgiveness, somehow convinced a mother’s tears would snap them out of their state.

Fiona reached for Evelyn’s arm when Marcus’s—a boy with russet hair and honey colored eyes—family came. The Enchantress wept when his father wailed and Evelyn had to console them both while Marcus himself stood by, offering quiet pleas for his father to stop.

“Can you fix this? Can you fix my brother?” Oduwa’s sister asked, prostrate before the Enchanter and the Herald as though the two women were gods and she a begging supplicant.

Fiona bit her tongue to keep from moaning and shook her head.

“We didn’t know. We didn’t know what he’d do! He sent us a letter every month and we sent him money. Then the letters stopped. We didn’t know! I thought we were helping him…Oh! Will the Maker forgive me?”

Evelyn forgave families like Oduwa’s. But Fiona’s assistant, Nashir, had to drag her away hurling invectives from families like Timothy’s and Sam’s and Antoinette’s, families who insisted their children were better off this way or better dead.

And then some…

Cullen was wrong. There was no family in Ferelden crying for Joseph. No one answered those letters.

**

Josephine was not amused when Evelyn brought the liberated elves back to Skyhold, she knew, perhaps more than most, that the keep wouldn’t be able to support these people for very long.

But Evelyn, and more pointedly Dorian, was adamant they not be refused. He spent his free time among them daily, inquiring after their needs, tending to the sick and wounded as best he could. He assisted the other healers, growing frustrated that all his practice yielded no better results than sloppily mended wounds that scarred or bones reset so poorly the other, better talented healers usually pushed him aside to re-break the bones and set them properly.

That happened today, to an elven child no more than 7. Playing in the broken, hidden spaces of the keep he had fallen, his forearm textbook broken. Dorian concentrated, focused on warping the Veil _through_ not _around_ like the text books taught. The child’s mother held her babe as he cried, placid, never flinching when the child screamed louder.

“There there, almost done.” Dorian soothed, his mana greatly reduced by his effort. The result was a crooked healing that had the child’s arm set unnaturally akimbo. One of the senior healers cried out in anguish, cursing and lamenting that the fracture would need to be fractured again and set properly so the child wouldn’t be chicken-winged.

Dorian forced himself to watch the child’s tears, hear the child’s screams. Seared them into his mind, a constant curse of his weakness.

And he wasn’t quite clear on what was worse. The child's suffering, authored by his clumsy hand, or the fact that the mother never flinched, having grown used to the sound of her child’s cries. Even in freedom, bondage left unhealable scars.

He dreamed of Dal'ras. Of bleeding lips and broken scrying stones. He dreamed of forest brown eyes that fluttered closed with a soft sigh when teenaged and timid lips pressed against one another. He dreamed of when he broke that heart with the back of his hand and a snarling curse he couldn't remember anymore.

He was supposed to be different. Better.

But he kept hurting.

It made Dorian dark, seeking a shadowy corner in Herald’s Rest, away from Bull, away from Krem and the bloody Chargers. Away from everybody who might be hurt either explicit or implicit by him.

“Master Pavus.” A nasally voice stumbled across his name. Dorian peered up from his cups, annoyed.

“A rather unfortunate address given our present circumstances. Call me Dorian or call me nothing.” He snapped.

The woman, young yet careworn by stress far beyond the years of her body, flinched and began to draw away from him.

Appalled by his monstrous behavior, Dorian relented and extended a hand. “Forgive me, drink has made me sullen. You wished to speak with me Miss…”

“Anh Bao.” She answered sinking into the empty chair.

“And what can I do for you Anh Bao?”

Anh Bao glanced about, deep set brown eyes calculating and searching for eavesdroppers and patrons who wandered too close. “I saw you struggle with the elven boy today. Your wish to help is painfully evident, but your skill…”

“Ahh, another come to revel in my limitations.” Dorian snarled, slurping his wine. Anh Bao scrunched her face distastefully, perhaps she had miscalculated.

“I must beg your forgiveness again, it seems you are not used to my particular brand of churlishness. I jest, self-deprecatingly. It is no slight against you.”

Anh Bao considered this for a moment, mind trying to choose the next words carefully and correctly. “You are stifled by the means available to you Master,” Dorian’s eyes crinkled, correcting her gently with a glance. “Dorian. What if I told you there are other means for you to help beyond your textbook theories and the restorative magicks taught by the Cirlces.”

Dorian put down his glass, intrigued. “Go on.”

“You have great passion.”

Dorian snorted. “In more ways than one but continue.”

Anh Bao laughed, long black hair a spill of ink against bright robes the color of deep fuscia and embellished with gold patterns and designs.

“Your passion should be enough to heal the sick and the wounded.”

“If that were the case, no one within a 50 yard radius of me would ever be ill.”

“You jest, I can make that jest a reality.”

She watched him, she had ever since arriving at Skyhold, alone and friendless. Ser Pavus had a heart larger the breadth of Skyhold, evident in the way he cared for his friends, the Herald, and the people. He would want to help.

Dorian’s face darkened, her intent plain. “You speak of…”

“Yes.”

Dorian rose quickly, chair scooting back against the wooden floor with a screech. Anh Bao gravely mis-stepped and fear struck within her a panic. He would reveal her to the templar Commander and she could be at best tossed out of Skyhold... or worse.

“Wait! No. Please! Listen!"

“You speak of evil! And you come to me with this why? Because I’m the Tevinter?!”

“No magic is inherently evil.” Anh Bao hissed, keeping her voice the lowest she could make it. “No more than a sword is evil in its simple existence. What matters is how it is wielded. Yes, I chose you partly because you are from Tevinter. You would understand. You also want to help. So do I.”

He knew this well. The old argument of intent rather than execution.

“I wish to aid you in your passion. You wish to help, I wish to help you help others. Restorative magic is no good for you. It is weak, you tear at it with your potent magic, it is fragile and breakable in your hands. But in _other_ disciplines, you could save lives, rebuild them, even restore them. Is that not what you wish?”

Tears shimmered in the corner of Anh Bao’s eyes, sliding down a wide and expressive face, pretty with her flared cheekbones covered by warm amber skin, scored by a scar that curled around her chin and up to her temple.

“You’ve risked much speaking with me. I could turn you over to Lady Trevelyan. I would be right to.”

Anh Bao shook her head with deep conviction. “No. Lady Trevelyan is a friend to us mages. She does not hate us for what we are or what we can do the way others have. I use my magic to protect and to heal. I know in my heart she would never harm me. I have faith in her. In her cause. In you.”

Dorian’s face did not change and Anh Bao felt an old fear rip through her, the fear of being given up to captors who would beat and torture her. Who would Silence her, strip her of her life giving magic on nothing but a whispered accusation.

No. Lady Trevelayn was good. Lady Trevelyan deserved her faith. And as the Herald trusted this man, she would give no less trust.

“Why? Why take the risk?”

“I can help you help them. You are a powerful mage. Imagine if your power was put to healing.”

“You have too much faith in me.”

“Do I?”

“And how do I know I can trust you?”

She considered this, then gave herself over to her faith.

“The mere breath of this to anyone and I hang. I want…I am _not_ evil. There is a way to expose people to what I can do. The people trust you. It can be through you. Now that we are free of Circles, there is a place for _all_ magic. _All_ Mages. If you suspect me of manipulation, simply turn me in. I put myself in your hands.”

Her faith in her savior was rewarded when Dorian’s face softened into a curious expression of intrigue.

“Alright Lady Anh Bao, when do we begin?”

**

While Dorian spent exhaustive nights engaged in clandestine meetings with Anh Bao, Evelyn spent exhaustive days _and_ exhaustive nights throwing herself back into her work, hunched over her desk, pouring over the latest reports and letters while Cullen looked on sadly, still feeling the hole in his pocket where his rings once rested.

She sent two squads of scouts to look for the man named Dominus, not even his name, but a moniker he went under as a trafficker. Not all the families took their children home, unwilling to be confronted with a constant reminder of their sin. Evelyn took them, gave them rooms or made them when there were none. They didn’t play with the refugee children. They didn’t write or draw or run. They answered everyone with ‘Ser’ or ‘Madam’ and didn’t protest when it was time to go to bed.

“What do I do with them Cullen?” She asked her templar. Before coming to the Inquisition, Evelyn had no experience with the Tranquil or mages. Her branch of House Trevelyan—more like the trunk considering her father held the Bann—had no mage. Something Gareth considered a point of pride.

“You don’t _do_ anything with them. They are people still. They are still children. In the Order, we put them to work. They ran our businesses as shopkeepers. Maddox worked in our forge. So send them to school. The refugees need to learn the common tongue, maybe we can make a school house out of that, have them teach each other. The older ones can work with our tradesmen, teach them a skill.”

“That’s a good idea Commander.”

“I have them occasionally.”

“Inquisitor.” Josephine startled Evelyn out of her focus, causing her to knock over one of the meticulously placed pawns on the war table.

“What is it Josie?”

Their relationship roughened after the dragon. They were never really that close but always amicable. Now that easy, arm’s length friendship cooled. Not frosty, but it seemed like the warmth between them leeched away with every passing day.

“I’ve a letter here from Lord Montblanc of Val Chevin.”

“I don’t know him.”

“You should and he knows you, quite well it seems. He’s heard of our recent acquisition.”

“They are people Josephine, not objects. They aren’t an ‘acquisition’ they are our guests.”

Josephine nodded, noting the correction. “Of course, you are right Inquisitor. Yet it seems he was to be the recipient of the human cargo the Tevinters were transporting.”

“Don’t tell me he’s written asking for them back.”

“See for yourself.”

Josephine passed the letter to Leliana who made a small noise of sad disapproval before passing the letter on to Evelyn.

She scanned the letter before stopping in the middle of the page, a bout of laughter making her unable to continue.

“The balls on this ass. He doesn’t want them back he wants compensation for his losses.”

“Mon dieu!” Leliana exclaimed, incredulous herself.

“He knows slavery is illegal, so he has couched it in terms of having purchased indentures for those servants to work in his mines. He demands we compensate him for the ‘good workers’ he ‘paid’ for and for income lost due to their absence.” Josephine explained.

“He can kiss my black ass. And I want you to tell him so.”

Cullen laughed and Josephine balked.

“Inquisitor, perhaps it is wiser we…”

“You are not suggesting we pay the man!”

“We cannot afford to be so dismissive of him. Up until now he’s been one of our allies, providing us with soldiers, food, and other goods. If we neglect him now, we will lose this lucrative alliance.”

“I will be damned to the Void if I negotiate with a slaver. The answer is no Josephine.”

“Inquisitor please.”

“I said no.”

“My Lady Trevelyan!” Josephine almost stamped her foot in annoyance, raising her voice the loudest either of them have ever heard. “This is not something we can play fast and loose with. I don’t need to tell you our situation is very delicate.”

Leliana coughed, unwilling to get in between the two spitfires but also unable to remain silent. “The damage the dragon has done as hurt our stores, our _guests_ aggravate this condition.”

“And I’ve reduced the amount being sent to the soldiers, trying to distribute what we have evenly but with this new burden…”

“They ain’t a burden damnit!”

“Inquisitor.” Josephine. “But they are. And that is the truth of it.”

“So what would you have me do? Throw them out? Send them to the alienages so instead of living in poverty and slavery they can just live in poverty? They can barely speak common, and have been caged and chained together since being sold all the way in fucking Minrathous! But I have to toss them out because they don't turn a profit!?”

“It is a difficult choice, my lady,” Josephine tried to ease the tension. “I do not envy that you have to make it, but consider this. Corypheus is defeated. When he was the threat, our patrons were all too eager to shower you with wealth and goods. Both for their protection and to keep with the times. Your star was ascendant, they wanted to be on the correct side of history. To say they supported the mighty Inquisition in the destruction of a great and terrible evil.

“Now that threat is gone, and our same patrons are re-evaluating whether it is worth it to them to keep us as allies, discard us, or destroy us and take what we have.”

Cullen shifted nervously, Vivienne’s warning still hissing in the back of his head. ‘It will _never_ be over.’

“We cannot afford, in our state, to cast aside our allies so easily. Especially one so generous as Montblanc. The choices you make, from the far reaching ones down to the very smallest will be examined with an even more critical eye than before. That’s why I urge caution. It is distasteful, I don’t wish to treat with this man any more than you do, but it would be far more damaging to dismiss him outright.”

She was right, damn her. Her heart and her head pulled hard in two different directions, ripping her soul neatly in half. She knew what she _needed_ to do and yet…

“Do we have the money to pay him?” Evelyn asked, defeated.

“Yes.” Josephine answered.

The pawn Evelyn gripped pressed painfully into the meat of her hand. With a great cry she threw it at the table, upsetting the rest, before storming out the door.

Josephine looked distraught. She turned to her fellow counselors who seemed just as bewildered.

“Josephine. Pay the man but let him know under no uncertain terms is he to engage in this type of behavior again under peril of war.”

“And I will send scouts to ensure he makes good on his word.”

“Okay.” Josephine sniffed. This had not gone the way she meant to. She harbored no ill feelings toward the Inquisitor, she genuinely valued her as a friend. But part of that friendship meant, at least to her, that the hard choices and the hard truths be known to her and not sugar coated. Montblanc was no petty lordling looking to profit off slave labor. He was one of the richest of Skyhold’s benefactors, a fact they could not ignore, an ally they could not afford to lose, and an enemy they couldn’t not afford to gain.

Paying him was the right thing to secure the much needed relationship, no matter how sickening it sat in all their stomachs.

Leliana adjourned the council, retreating to her rookery while Cullen chased down the Inquisitor, finding her on her personal practice field. She carved the smallest, least obtrusive space she could find, given their dearth of it, out of a narrow corridor between the barn wall and the stone wall of the keep.

Her red and gold bow hummed and snapped as she angry nocked and fired each arrow, feathering the same spot on her target until the arrows could no longer find the space to stick.

Cullen saw the pain in her face. Her broken arm still smarted and under this punishing routine it might never heal properly.

“Evelyn.” He called quietly.

She ignored him, and kept firing. He waited until she finished the quiver before she picked up a spare one, stuffed with more.

“Evelyn.” He called again, louder this time. She grunted, she heard, but she kept firing.

Sighing, Cullen stepped to where the target sat some 10 or so yards away. He stood in front of it and screamed. “EVELYN!”

Arrows buzzed his ears, passing close enough for him to feel their wake, but not close enough to feel their sting.

Undaunted by her insistence, he began to move, trusting her heart (and more importantly her skill) to stop firing before she hurt him.

Evelyn growled in frustration and pulled her bow back the farthest it would go, loosing three arrows in such quick succession it seemed that they were fired simultaneously. They passed so close to Cullen’s head his hair mussed, its natural curl returning almost magically.

Evelyn blinked, shocked, and began to giggle.

“What’s so funny?”

“Your hair.”

“My what?”

Evelyn pulled him around to the front of the barn and showed him his reflection in Jackson’s water trough. Sure enough, Commander Cullen finally earned Varric’s name for him.

“I should style your hair like that all the time.”

Cullen blanched. “I’ll thank you to leave my hair to me. Still,” Cupping her chin in his hands, he brought her face to his in a tender kiss. When he pulled away the wetness in her eyes made him surge forward again and kiss her harder.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It was supposed to be easier now. It was supposed to get better. I was supposed to be free. I’m never gonna be free of this am I?”

Cullen kissed her again because he had no answer.

Her marked hand flared lightly, heat radiating in the column of his chest reminding him that, if need be, he could discard the mantle of Commander and walk away at any time while she remained tethered, _anchored_ to her title.

“Solas, Vivienne, Dorian. Everyone will come and go. And I’ll be forced to stay.”

“Not everyone,” he murmured against her mouth, tongue slipping inside for a soft caress against her own. Evelyn moaned, hands in the fur of his mantle tightening into fists. “The Inquisitor needs her Commander, as long as you have need of me, my lady, I am yours to use.” He nipped her lip and added in a husky tone. “In _whatever_ way you choose to use me.”

Evelyn moaned again, made breathless with the declaration before rational sense made one last attempt for control of her mind. “No. You deserve…”

Dreamless sleep.

A simple life.

A simple wife.

Simple children with gold eyes and black hair.

Plain and Ordinary.

Cullen trailed kisses from her mouth to her neck. “To use your words, ‘that ain’t for you to decide.’”

She snickered in his ear, her teeth nibbling at his earlobe, delighted by his attempts to imitate her drawl. “Don’t talk like that, you sound silly.”

“Hmm… Then don’t talk like it’s your choice what I decide to do. I will stay with you, my lady, no matter what, no matter for how long. I promise. That is my choice, I am happy with it.”

His rings would sit and wait, gathering dust until they were both free and he didn’t mind it. He’d wait for her.

And if he waited forever, so be it.

Feather light kisses hardened, deepened against the flesh of her neck. There standing upright in the barn, they pressed together, need overtaking their better senses until a gruff cough shattered the illusion of their private passion.

Cullen startled away from the Inquisitor who wiped a hand over her face to hopefully, futilely, wipe away her no doubt dazed expression.

Jim.

Again.

Cullen felt the frustrated scream build in his throat as the headache built in his temples.

“Wait, Commander. I swear it is urgent this time.”

“It. Better. Be.”

He handed his boss what looked like rolled parchment. Cullen took the item, a gold cyptex lavishly embellished with filigree and the motifs of the Chantry.

He broke the seal and a roll of vellum slid out. He unfurled it, read a few lines, then turned as pale as the message he held in his hand.

His fingers shook and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead. Old screams came roaring back, old hisses and moans, old visions of terror, of friends dying choking on bile and blood.

“Cullen,” her cool hand on his neck banished the fugue for but a moment, relegating them to a dark but still visible place in his mind. “What is it?”

“It is a message from Divine Victoria. She is re-instituting the Circles.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this out so apologies for quality.
> 
> Ok, let's go!


	5. Mages, Templars, and Inquisitors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double postin today because why not?

The 10 of them watched her pace the war room. Josephine, anticipating the Inquisitor’s anger, smartly decided that the War Table didn’t need their tokens right now, removing them lest the woman find something small and sharp to throw.

Instead she took one of her daggers and drove it into the ancient wood. Josephine sighed, lamenting the 8,000 royal mahogany.

“I believed her! She told me she was going to change Thedas and she changes nothing! I supported her! I put _my_ name on that damn letter to the Councilors because I _believed_ her.”

Cassandra summoned the emergency council, decreeing all of her inner circle be present. Most watched her now as she raged, unable to offer consolation for fear of that anger being unduly focused on them.

“Viney, hey.” Varric attempted to be brave. “Circles have existed for damn near forever, having them back won’t end the world.”

Sera giggled with none of her usual mirth. “Butcha remember, Circles is why this all went to shite in the first place.”

“You were there Varric. You saw what Anders did, you knew _why_ he did it.” B countered.

Cassandra made a soft noise of disgust, Cullen coughed.

“Dank, dripping darkness. Forgotten. Closed away, stomach shrinking.” Cole mumbled. “I don’t…I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.”

B stopped her manic pacing, eyes focused on Cole. “I will _not_ let anything like that happen. I fucking swear.”

The letter was generic, filled with bombastic and floral language, praising the new Divine and her ascendance to the Sunburst Throne. It even included a copy of the newest Book of the Chant, the Canticle of Victoria. The letter contained no concrete detail, only that circles and the Templar order would be restored.

“Inquisitor,” Blackwall rumbled. “It says that mages are _requested_ to return to their home Circles not _required_. Maybe her Radiance will make Circles optional, available to anyone who chooses.”

“Or maybe she just doesn’t want to rekindle the war with such threatening language. She’ll _say_ request while her Templar dogs root out anyone who chooses to remain free.” Leliana snarled before remembering herself and her company. “Apologies Commander, I meant no offense.”

Cullen waved a hand, headache too bright to offer up a defense.

The shadows in Cullen’s eyes grew by the second, the headache the letter spawned also grew every moment he was required to be on his feet. The whole situation was rather unreal, a Mage Divine advocating for the return of Circles and Templars. Though, he supposed it made sense being Vivienne. In their limited conversations, she always seemed like one of the ‘traditional’ mages. One of the good ones, the ones the Templars talked about being model mages, the ones they would hold up in front of the recalcitrant ones as ideals to aspire to.

A mage the Templars loved.

A mage every other mage hated.

Vivienne left Skyhold knowing what choice she’d make, putting Evelyn in great danger. He knew there was a reason he didn’t like her.

No matter what, though, he’d never go back to the Order, even if he could do it without lyrium. That part of his life, that dream, died in Kirkwall. He was needed here, he could be much better here. He wouldn’t leave his lady.

“Boss, your army is mostly mages.” Iron Bull started.

“Void take it, she better not expect _me_ to give myself up to a Circle.” Dorian finished.

“No one is giving themselves up, I don’t give a damn what she says. I swore to protect them. I _swore_. I looked Grand Enchanter Fiona in the eye and swore no harm would come to her.”

“I will be the first to admit that the Circles had their issues. But perhaps we are being too hasty in our condemnation.” Cassandra stepped forward, placing mollifying hands on the Inquisitor. “Vivienne is herself a mage, surely she would not consign her brethren to the fates they faced before. She means to reform the Circles as not having them…”

“As not having them what? We’ve had free mages for the better part of two years with no incidents.”

“But you have not considered…”

“What Josephine? What have I not considered now?”

Josephine flinched but remained resolute. “We have had reports of mages abusing their new freedoms. Taking up residence in villages, ruling them like warlords.”

“We’ve dealt with them and the actions of a few don’t warrant locking up the whole of them.”

“And the abominations?”

It was hard to fault the families of the Tranquil children when she heard stories like this. There had been more than a few incidents involving abominations. Ravens come in the middle of the night detailing stories of households ripped apart by possessed family members or boarders looking for a place to stay for the evening. Some she could apprehend, seeing to them herself when the leads were good. But she had no real force to hunt down the ones who got away, the ones who left the carnage in their wake. There were no Templars anymore and the Seekers were gutted as well. All she had, were mages.

The room quieted as they looked to her for an answer.

B looked out the window to the mountains beyond, tall spires of rock like fingers reaching to touch the sky.

B, smiling, found her answer.

**

The Inquisitor kept no prisoners save him, leaving Samson alone in the damp dungeon with naught but his thoughts. Cullen checked in on him weekly, asking after his health or to see if he needed anything.

Brought him his lyrium too.

Cullen had his lackeys deliver his other doses but whenever the Commander came to visit, he brought him his vial himself despite the clear discomfort it caused him. Samson remarked on it once.

“They ain’t giving you enough up top you gotta take another man’s sip? I remember that used to get you a day in the pinch with nothing.”

Cullen passed the vial with trembling fingers, a tremble that subsided once the liquid was no longer in his hands. A test against temptation, trying to build a resistance to the substance. He didn’t want to be so scared of it he could never touch or see the stuff, he wouldn’t let it rule his body or his mind or his actions. He’d conquer this in all ways so he tested himself by carrying to Samson his dose, proud that he never once had the urge to take a sip.

“I don’t take it anymore Samson.”

“I knew you was different, you smelled funny. Templars all have a smell, faint kinda like sugar in a saucepan. You don’t smell like that, I thought it was because you spent your nights dousin’ yourself in lady funk or summat. Not that I blame you…”

Samson tossed a feral grin at his jailer before popping the cork and swallowing the substance down.

Cullen rolled his eyes, refusing to be goaded yet again by Samson’s vulgarity or his insistence on referring to the Inquisitor in less than respectful terms.

“Whatcha wantin’ now. If it’s about those Templar camps I toldja you can piss…”

“Corypheus is defeated Samson.” Cullen didn’t gloat or crow, it wasn’t in him. Much like he also didn’t gloat or crow when Meredith fell.

Samson’s face didn’t quite fall, nor did it seem like his spirits lifted either. He looked resigned, as if he knew the Elder One’s defeat was all but a foregone conclusion.

“And the Inquisitor?” He asked.

“She lives.”

“Hmm.”

“Does this news displease you?”

“Nah. Knew it was gonna ‘appen. Woman like that. I could tell by the way she punches she was gonna get the Elder One or die tryin’. Reminds me of Meredith sometimes. Less batty sure, but she’s got the same determination and the same strength. She’s convicted. Figure that’s why you like her so much.”

Cullen didn’t respond.

“You ain’t come here to rub it in didja?”

“No.”

“What are you here for?”

Cullen presented a map of Thedas, the same map he always put in front of Samson, asking him for the remaining locations of Templar base camps and hideouts.

“She never wanted to hurt them. No harm will come to them if they surrender. And if you don’t trust her word, trust mine.”

“I’d rather trust hers, _Knight Captain_.”

“The war is over Samson, but those soldiers, they don’t know it yet. Anyone we can bring in, we will.”

Raleigh sighed and reached for the map.

But Samson’s stubbornness softened far too late to save any of his men. Cullen’s soldiers reported that the former general’s information was still good. They found the camps in the exact places they were supposed to be, but within the camps they found only bodies.

Some of them were covered in wounds, ripped apart by rending, wicked claws. Others were found with twisted smiles and half closed eyes, half empty goblets in their hands. Most though were found whole, rooted where they fell. Bodies trapped in red glass, crystal statues standing silent, the bodies within sleeping or screaming.

“I’m sorry Samson,” Cullen said, returning only after the last of his patrols sent their reports. “We never found anyone.”

Samson made a small noise of grief, turning his face away from the Commander.

“I failed them, even at the last. Those were my men. My soldiers.”

“It is hard, I know.”

“No you don’t!” Samson wheeled on him, anger flaring too hot, turning his face a familiar malignant shade of red.

“You aren’t the only one here who has lost good soldiers!” Cullen roared back. “Some of them you yourself killed. Do you remember Haven? I do. I buried 12 of my people after that!”

Raleigh backed down, whatever his feelings were about the man, Samson could admit the bastard was a good Commander.

So long as the soldiers weren’t Templars.

“If I recall Haven correctly, your Herald _buried_ quite a bit more o’ mine.”

**

After that, they stopped talking about the war, about work, and sometimes allowed themselves to remember the ‘good old days’ (such as they were) in Kirkwall.

“You always had shit for brains Rutherford. It was _Nelson_ who lost his knickers, remember? He had a belly like a beer barrel and he fancied one of the serving girls at the Blooming Rose.”

“No, you’re mistaken, it was Markinson, damnit. I was there!”

“Markinson…you…sure? Maybe…maybe you’re right. Memory’s fuzzy sometimes. Don’t remember stuff I ought to.”

He ran a finger over the lip of the philter Cullen had brought him for the day. Some of the lyrium had dried on it, he picked up the crust with his finger and brought it to his lips, forgetting completely that he wasn’t alone. Cullen never spoke about lyrium with Raleigh or any of the other scant few Templars that made the Inquisition their new devotion. He kept it secret, like his struggle to break his chains was something worthy of shame. He didn’t want them to believe he thought himself better because he didn’t need that daily dose, and he definitely didn’t want them to know of the price he paid for that so-called freedom. The pain he endured he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy, who, at one time in his life, was the man standing before him now.

Pity replaced the anger.

And now that pity was being replaced by something else. In a world were Templars were no longer, it felt good to have someone, even if that someone was Raleigh Samson, who knew what life in the Order was like. Who knew about double dose doldrums and Canticle races. Who knew that Meredith Stannard put far too much sugar in her tea than what should be allowable by law.

It felt good to talk with someone who knew that Sister Lakshmi had bar none the prettiest voice in the choir. Ignoring the blood and the screaming of Harrowings, putting aside for a time the gentle voices of the Tranquil because they always came back no matter what to exact their justice. Someone who remembered the moments of peace, that there was indeed some peace, and not only for the Templars.

Someone who remembered when it snowed during the coldest winter in Kirkwall and how everyone, mage, Templar, and Tranquil gathered in the open spaces throwing snow, eating it, and explaining to the children that the world wasn’t going to end in ice.

Someone who knew him before he changed his life, who knew that Cullen Rutherford was a man After Kinloch and Before Conclave and that _not all of that man was bad._

Not all, just most. Cullen thought with a rueful smile.

“Raleigh. You don’t have to… there’s another way.”

“I know what that way feels like when I got tossed out on my arse. Doin’ all sorts of filthy things for a few coppers and a few coppers more just for a bit of the dust. The fucking _dust_ Rutherford.”

He crushed his fingers together, feeling the crystals roll between the pads of his fingertips.

“He came to me like a fucking Maker-send. I was a Kirkwall guttersnipe crawling after lyrium. Corypheus gave me that lyrium and he gave me back my _sword_. Do you know what that feels like, Rutherford? The chance to feel like a man again? I’d have been a fool to say no. I was a greater fool for saying yes.”

Samson snarled viciously, throwing the philter against the wall, smashing it to little pieces.

“I don’t know how you do it. Maker knows, I’ve fucking proven I can’t.”

“You can. It takes time. And you have to want to. And it helps to have a friend willing to go through it with you.”

“Then I’m missing one of the pieces of the puzzle there mate.”

Cullen reached a hand through the bar, open, offering a handshake. “No you’re not.”

**

They started small, reducing his allowances from twice a day, then to once a day, then to once every other day. Samson was displeased with the slow progress and pushed to be taken down to once every three days.

“I can take it damnit! You ain’t my nursemaid you’re my fucking jailer, gimmie what I want!”

Cullen relented, against his better judgment.

There was a knock on his door, an urgent pounding. “Commander! Commander!”

B groaned and rolled, pulling the covers that Cullen vacated to wrap around her. Cullen grinned sleepily and kissed her. “Greedy.”

He dressed in pants and nothing else, ready to ream whoever decided their message couldn’t wait until a more reasonable hour. When he swung open his door, face full of fury, he found a frightened McKennison, the man responsible for the only occupied cell in the dungeons.

“Commander! It’s Samson, he’s lost his mind!”

“Shit! I told that stubborn…”

Cullen pushed passed the soldier and sprinted for the dungeons. He heard Samson before anything else, smelled him too, vomit and unwashed flesh and other filth. The man bellowed, screaming a bear caught in a trap.

Samson’s eyes were wild, rolling in his head and unfocused. He held a sword made of air and he slashed at unseen enemies, throwing his whole body into the motion until he crashed against the furniture, breaking the chair that went with the writing desk into large and sharp chunks of wood.

“Samson! Samson stop!”

“Rrrgh Fuck you demon shit!” Samson swung his fake sword against his real demons again, thudding against the stone wall, rapping his head so hard it came away bloody. Cullen, outside of McKennison, was the only person who had a key to Samon’s cell, that fact came in handy now as he fumbled in his pocket for the keyring. The only other keys on the chain were the one that locked away his lyrium kit and the one that locked away his wedding rings.

Samson charged him when the cell door opened, Cullen quickly slammed it shut behind him, locking the lion in a cell with a cornered, crazed wolf. The man made to run him through but Cullen dodged, grabbing at Samson’s shirt before the man had the chance to dash himself against the wall again.

“You ain’t seeing these demons Knight Captain? Where’s your fucking sword? Skyhold is overrun!”

“There are no demons Samson. No demons are here!”

“Fuck you, this ain’t in my head. I see ‘em, there howling for me. Hissin’. In my head like a bunch of fucking snakes. Behind ya!”

The Templar swung again, arms arcing wide, catching Cullen in the ear, stunning him. He fell to the stones and Samson bellowed again. “Fucking shit I knew you’d gone soft.”

Cullen lay on the ground, groaning, feeling like his head was split wide open and messy like the melon Iron Bull tested out his new axe on.

“Maker’s fuck you hit hard.”

Samson didn’t acknowledge him, he only screamed and cursed, taking and inflicting wounds against his phantom attackers.

“Samson please, there’s nothing.” Cullen had to dodge another blow to the head, and another one to his balls. He was extremely grateful the man hadn’t a real weapon.

“Quit it, damn you, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Seeing no way to subdue him, Cullen kicked low, aiming for the man’s knees. Samson swiped and were he wielding a real sword, Cullen’s arms would have been severed from his body.

“Fucking shitty useless sword!” Samson made the motion of casting the sword away before lowering his body and charging.

The Commander planted his feet, bracing himself, but was thrown anyway. The two men crashed into the bed before rolling to the floor.

“Damnit Raleigh!”

Cullen pushed the man away, upsetting his balance. He was on his feet again and pushed Samson into the wall, holding him there with the strongest grip he could muster.

“Snap out of it. There are no demons here! It’s a dream, an illusion, it makes you see terrible things. But they are never real!”

Samson, still unconvinced, headbutted the Commander.

Which finally convinced him.

The two men sank to the ground, clutching wounded heads and groaning.

“Damn you gotta thick skull you bastard. Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I almost hurt you. I thought you was… Fuck, this is what it’s like? I had the nightmares before, but nothin’ so damned _convincing._ ”

Cullen pressed fingers to his head, checking for blood. His forehead came away clean but his nose gushed a fountain. “Yes.”

“How dya…damn…I take back what I said about bein’ soft.”

“I told you reducing the dose was too soon.”

“And I didn’t listen.”

“Will you listen now?”

“No.”

“Raleigh!”

“If I’m gonna do this, it’s gonna be on my terms not yours. I want this shit gone from me. It’s cost me too much. My men, the lies I fed them as I fed them their red. I want it gone Commander.”

“You’ll kill yourself.”

“Heh, I ain’t that lucky.”

**

  
It was still dark when Evelyn woke alone. She padded about the keep barefoot, looking in all the usual spots for her Commander whenever he left her in the middle of the night. He wasn’t cured of his withdrawal, and a dark part of her thought he might never fully be free of it. And though she wished he’d confide in her a little bit more when he had his nightmares or his illness, she respected his need to tackle some fights on his own. He wasn’t at his desk, banishing the lingering visions with late night/early morning paperwork. He wasn’t in her quarters either, snuggled with a book on her more comfortable furniture. He wasn’t in the Chantry either, praying for another day of strength.

She found him in the dungeon.

He was sitting on the floor, a thick white cloth stuffed up his nose passing a bottle of Kirkwall Black between the bars to Raleigh who had a thick white cloth wrapped around his head.

Too bewildered to speak she observed the men a moment, before deciding it was rude to eavesdrop. She backed away, ready to return to bed when a voice rang out from the cell.

“Lady Herald! Come join us for a drink.”

All three were well and truly sauced by sunup.

**

Samson had friends before, though not quite like this. Maddox had been his friend, before and after. And he made more than one friend during his time as a Red Templar, actual friends too, not just someone who called him Ser before and after they spoke.

This was decidedly different. Felt odd, like something in his stomach that didn’t quite sit right. He looked forward to chess games with the Commander, and his visits from the Lady Herald. Maybe that was because he got no visitors outside those two and the green boy they sent to him with his meals.

Or.

Maybe it was because he actually enjoyed the company of his jailers.

“That’s some Starkhaven Syndrome shite if I’ve ever heard it.”

_You ain’t one of them Raleigh. You never will be, and they’ll keep you in here till you rot. A toy to play with, a pet project. Nothing more._

He heard the door to the dungeon creak and he listened for the sound of the footsteps to tell him who approached.

Cullen clanked, the heavy footfalls of a man who strode with purpose. Raleigh _hated_ Cullen three months ago, and some part of him still did. Hated his smile, hated his stupid curly hair, hated how it was _so easy_ it was for him to just give up the blue while he still struggled to keep from screaming every other second of every other day. And he really loathed how he lucked out with the Lady Herald, finding a woman who loved him despite the horrors of his past. Samson would never find a man or a woman like that, his past was too damned ugly to just love through.

Bitterness and bile rose to the back of his throat. Cullen said there would be good days and bad. Today was one of the bad. And he intended to make whoever walked down those steps feel it. ‘Specially if it was Golden Boy Born Lucky Cullen Fucking Rutherford.

The steps were light, quiet, but not silent. She was deliberately walking to make noise, knowing that if she needed to, she could walk soundlessly.

“Samson, how are you today?”

She looked as angry as he felt, and the anger in his heart subsided a bit.

“I’m still here Inquisitor.”

“I hear ya.”

She popped the cork on glass bottle of beer and drank it down.

“Are you just gonna drink in front of a thirsty man like that? I never took you for cruel.”

“I ain’t.” She made to toss him another bottle but thought better of it, realizing his fingers might not be so nimble or quick to catch it.

Raleigh sipped the beer, a nasty, bitter brew thoroughly Ferelden. “You ain’t come down to drink with a man rottin’ from the inside out.”

“The only way you’re rotting is from the outside in. Baths are not prohibited down here you know.”

“Waste ‘a water. I get no company save you and your Commander and neither of you I care about offendin’.”

She smirked, mischief brewing behind a crooked smile. “I mean to change that.”

“You letting me go?”

“You wanna be let go?”

Her quick retort meant that she actually had considered the notion, that whatever she offered (which was likely not freedom) if he wanted release she might have granted it.

Begrudging friendship or not, there was no way in the Void Evelyn was going to let Samson go free. But she didn’t want him to know that just yet.

“Not like there’s anywhere for me to go. Turn me lose and every bastard with a sword from here to Tevinter is like to run me through. No Lady Herald, I ain’t ready to go just yet.”

“Good. I may have some use for you. Care to listen?”

“Get me another one of them beers, shite as it is, and I may open my ears.”

Evelyn grinned again, pleased her gambit paid off. She produced another bottle, knowing he’d ask for one.

Raleigh conceded with a grin as well. “Too damn clever Lady Herald. Whatcha want?”

“My dungeon is empty.”

“I noticed.”

“And you should also notice that I am reluctant to take heads…” She muttered an aside. “Though not completely unwilling.”

“I heard about that, glad it wasn’t none a mine who did it.”

“Still, I’ve an empty dungeon but I don’t lack for prisoners so what have I done with them?”

“You come to ask questions or get to the point?”

“The point is, I make them work for me. You’re no good to me rotting down here.”

“No offense but I ain’t gonna be any good to you topside either.”

“No, you’d be a terrible emissary and you can’t spy on your former employer because I already took care of that. When I say work I mean something of a more concrete nature, literally.”

Samson took another drag on the beer, quirking his eyebrows in a ‘get on with it’ exhortation.

“Okay Samson, I need you to help me build a Circle.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rival!Samson + Rival!Cullen + Evelyn = Band of BROS.  
> Fight me.


	6. Exalted March

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey you. Yeah you.  
> Thanks for reading. :)

To his credit Samson only started roaring after she explained what happened with Divine Victoria and her own personal goals for Skyhold’s Circle.

“She wants the Circle’s back, she’ll get ‘em but it’ll be a Circle the likes of which no one has seen before. Governed by mages, for mages.”

“And Templars?”

“Haven’t thought that far.”

“Well you better start. What’ll you do if Divine Victoria gets wind of this and sends her shiny new Templars after ya and demands you annul the Circle like they did in Rivain?”

Annul, a word that hit like an anvil dropped. Her heart thudded in her chest twice before she could catch her breath to respond. She had family in Rivain, her mother’s people. Aunts, Uncles, cousins. All dead.

“That’s not going to happen. Period. I swore like, you swore to protect them. And I mean it.”

“And when they send an Exalted March after you? Then what? You’re good Lady Herald, but you’re not that good.”

“Vivienne would never…”

“Oh, its Vivienne now? Way I remember you were callin’ her way worse earlier. Face it Lady T, she’s not your friend anymore. She duped you like all Orlesians do. Used you as a pawn in their grand fucking Game and discarded you the minute you ceased to be useful.”

“So what do you want me to do? Give my mages up, that’s like half my army. If anything, at the very least building a Circle will stall for time while I try to convince her to change her mind. And we still don’t know what she’ll do with them, she may reform. I have to believe she plans to reform them.”

“And if you had your way?”

“Get rid of them.”

“No, Circles were fine, it was the damn Chantry that was the problem. Making people believe their Maker givin’ gift was some kind of unforgivable sin. Problem is, we can’t have every Tom, Dick, and Susie blowin’ up their houses when they come of age. Mages do need a place where they can be protected from nuts who wanna Tranquil solution them all, and demons who wanna possess them all. They need a place where they can learn and control the _gifts_ they were born with. Templars can do that. I…Templars _are good at that_. Our purpose was corrupted by the Chantry.”

Evelyn leaned against the wall and nodded, letting Raleigh speak.

“Go on Raleigh.”

“Build your Circle. I’ll help ya, for nothing other than feelin’ the sun on my back. When it’s done, stock it with any Templars willing and run it like an academy or something, I don’t fucking know, but _don’t let the Chantry anywhere near it_. That’s how it always shoulda been.”

“Maybe,” Her mind followed after his breadcrumbs. “Maybe it’ll catch on and other Circles will adopt the form. If Vivienne doesn’t want to change the system, maybe we can. Make it come from the outside and work in.”

Raleigh smiled, not a smirk or a grin or something cocky and half formed but an actual honest to Maker smile.

Evelyn didn’t understand what it was, but Raleigh did. This new plan, one that’ll likely see them all twisting on pyres, gave him hope. Raleigh Samson was a Templar, root to stem, balls to bone. Taking lyrium didn’t make you one nor did wearing pretty armor. Protecting mages, protecting the people from powers not yet controlled, protecting everyone from demons who would tempt the weak hearted, that’s what a Templar was. And that’s what Samson wanted to, _needed to_ be again to feel right in his skin.

Cullen, bastard that he was, was helping him get his body back.

But the Lady Herald, she would give him back his soul.

**

“How’d he take it?” Cullen asked. She had dinner brought to his quarters, they sat on the floor near his bed, chewing idly on food that had no taste to him. His headache hadn’t subsided since this morning, growing in intensity as the day wore on.

“Better than I thought, he actually seemed excited by the idea.”

“Hm.”

“And how are you taking it?”

“Better than I thought.”

“Be honest.” Her tone was flat and serious.

“I am. Before I was always worried a mage might… that abominations might tear through the mages and Haven might turn into Kinloch only much larger with far more deadly consequences. I didn’t want them contained, I wanted them gone.”

He rubbed his temples, grunting a bit, the motion aggravating the condition when it used to relieve it. Evelyn abandoned her food, not very hungry anyway, and knelt behind him, fingers digging lightly into his hair.

“What are you doing?”

“Returning a favor. Keep talking straw head.”

Cullen snorted. “The mages, your…our mages surprised me. They work well together, fight well together with my own men. Grand Enchanter Fiona leads them capably. Have you spoken to her yet about what you mean to do?”

Cullen’s question broke off into a low pleased moan as her fingers, not his, eased away at least some of the sting.

“I will address all of Skyhold tomorrow.”

“Should you at least talk to the mages first, see what they think?”

“Any concerns they’ll have I’ll address.”

“You mean to do it anyway don’t you?”

“Heart’s set.”

“You don’t have to do this, you could resist Evelyn.”

“Listen to you. Resist the Chantry?”

“I know that’s what you wanted before.”

“I wanted change. I wanted to make sure that whatever happened next, nothing like Kinloch or Kirkwall or Rivain could happen again. I want equality. I don’t want anyone hated or locked away because of the way they were born. I don’t want children made Tranquil because they’re parents were so damned afraid of what their flesh and blood could do. Kirkwall was violent change, Corypheus tried violent change. It don’t have to be that way. People don’t always have to fucking die for other people to get their shit together. And if I resist…I can’t guarantee that Vivienne won’t come after me. So instead of breaking, I’ll bend.”

To protect you, she thought, still rubbing idle circles in his hair.

Cullen melted, the sharpness that stabbed behind his eyes and down his neck dulled to a pulsing throb. He reached for her, pulling one of her hands, her left, out of his hair and around to kiss her palm and her wrists, heart squeezing at a naked ring finger.

“Still hurt?” She asked.

“A little.” He replied yawning.

“Up you go then, on the bed.”

“But dinner…” He trailed off when the kisses to his scalp wandered lower to kisses behind his ear and to his neck.

“Not hungry for food.”

“B…” he rumbled.

“Bed.” She corrected.

He resisted long enough to help her pack the food away, cold leftovers to munch on tomorrow. Then he obliged her, climbing onto his bed, summer breezes blowing through the hole in his roof containing the distant coolness of approaching fall.

“On your back, templar.” She commanded, purring.

“Yes ma’am.”

Cullen was a furnace on the coolest of days, but he radiated heat like a brazier in the summer, always overwarm. He wore no tunic in hotter weather, and his trousers were made of the lightest linen that he always shucked before bed. She straddled him, knees on either side of his hips, her hair a curtain around both their faces as she leaned down to kiss him. He enjoyed the way she towered over him, her hair and her arms caging him, cradling him. He felt protected, coveted this way.

And.

He really couldn’t beat the view.

She kissed him slowly, dragging her tongue across his, curling it against him, her lips a soft slide of flesh against his own. A tiny whimper vibrated in his throat and Cullen’s hands rose to her hips, squeezing gently, pushing and pulling against her so that her hips rocked slightly against his, waking his desire.

“How about now,” she cooed. “Feel better?”

“A little.” He answered honestly.

She kissed him again, nipping at his top lip, tongue lapping at his scar. “And now.”

“Little better.”

She leaned forward, drawing a line with her tongue from collarbone to earlobe.

“Now?” she whispered, breath hot in his ear rising a shudder in him that she felt.

He only moaned in response.

Satisfied, Evelyn continued to kiss and lick his neck, sucking at the patch of bare skin just below and behind his ear, right where his pulse jumped and raced, blood running hot under her attentions.

“Maker, more. Yes.” Cullen sighed reaching one hand to grip in her hair and the other gripping tighter at her hips.

She rolled them against him, her body seemingly boneless as she curled and rippled it, brushing lightly clothed but heated sexes against each other.

She left her marks on him with teeth and lips, light brown love bites bruising flesh the color of Ostwick’s beaches, sandy and golden.

“Jealous.” Cullen hissed after a sharp bite.

“Of?” She asked, still nibbling her better, more satisfying meal.

“You’ll leave a mark on me, but I can’t return the favor.”

She bit him harder, sinking teeth into the meat of his shoulder, eliciting a bright ringing moan from her beloved.

“Thought you liked that?” She returned, teasing the bite with another lick.

“I do, but sometimes I want to see you try to hide a mark for a change.”

“Getting possessive Commander?” One hand snaked down his body, nails scraping against his muscled chest, raking over the silverskin of the scar that cut across him hip to shoulder, stopping at his hips to grasp his hardness through flimsy cotton. “Need to let people know I’m yours?”

Cullen’s shifted his hips up, pressing himself harder into her hand. “Maker yes.”

She crawled down him, kissing and licking every sweet looking swath of skin along the way. Pausing her descent down his body, Evelyn kissed and licked at the smooth, shiny scar tissue that crossed his chest, laying across it reverent licks, each one a prayer of gratitude that the injury this scar reflected didn’t take his life. Continuing on, she pulled at his trousers, encouraging him to raise his hips so she could slide off the offending article of clothing.

His erection sprung free, hard and aching, inciting her hunger just a little bit more. He watched her, watched her eyes darken, watched her as her bottom lip folded between her teeth to keep from moaning at the sight of him. He watched her tongue lick those lips eagerly, watched as the woman he loved gave herself completely over to her want for him.

He watched those eyes snap back to his, watched her lips and her tongue move as she spoke, breath hot against already painfully heated flesh.

“Sorry to disappoint Commander, but tonight, you’re mine.”

Cullen couldn’t watch anymore, his eyes rolled back in his head as her lips and tongue descended on him, taking him all the way in her mouth.

They both groaned.

She savored the taste, he the tasting.

His head crashed back into the pillow, body liquefying in her mouth. She moaned as she sucked him, tongue still against his shaft as she bobbed slowly up then slowly down the long length of him. She slid back up, pausing to lay juicy, lippy kisses at the bulb crowning his shaft. She loved the way he tasted and the way the muscles in his neck tightened as he clenched his teeth, mouth clamped firmly closed to keep from screaming.

She, however, intended to make a point and therefore couldn’t allow such restraint. She released him, departing tongue curling in a lascivious lick.

“Uh uh, Commander,” Her hands gripped him at his base, squeezing and stroking. “Look at me.”

Caught literally by the balls, Cullen complied, dazed expression meeting her determined one. “I want to hear you scream. I want people to know that _you’re mine_.”

He held her eyes as she swallowed him down and down, to the back of her throat and then beyond it, her nose pushing into his fine dusting of darker gold curls.

“Evelyn Oh! Fuck!” His cry was satisfyingly loud for her desires so she continued, taking him the deepest she could, throat relaxed and closing around the head of him. His fingers twined in her roots, getting a good grip before he applied a gentle pressure, asking without asking for more.

Thrilled by the tingle in her scalp she obliged him, drawing up and swallowing down, deeper each time. Sometimes she swirled her tongue, drawing patterns in the silky skin, other times she kept it flat and let her mouth and neck do the pleasurable work.

Cullen just groaned, urging her on with pleas, bucks of his hips, and the push of his hand on her head.

“Maker, yes, Evelyn right there, Fuck yes, right there.” She hummed approvingly, ignoring her own arousal, having already decided this was something for him and not them both.

More than once as he approached the edge he tried to pull away from her, wanting to share the pleasure but she batted away his requests with a smile and a lick that wiped away coherent thought.

“I want them to hear only your voice tonight. I want to make you scream as you come, I want to hear it, I want to hear my name. Your pleasure gives me mine.” She moaned, lips dragging on the side of his shaft.

“Evelyn oh Maker!” He called again, desperate to fulfill her wishes as she fulfilled him.

His ears filled with the wet sounds of her mouth on him, his heavy breathing and her muffled moans and groans, vibrations shooting through him, coursing just under his skin like arcs of lightning. He shivered, pulled taught by the rapturous pleasure that coiled into a ball in the pit of his loins. He grasped her hair tighter, involuntarily, whole body clenching as her name strangled in his throat.

“I’m coming, Evelyn, I’m coming! Fuck. Evelyn!”

His pleasure flooded her mouth, tangy, tart, hot, but she didn’t stop. She continued to lick at him slowly, drawing all she could from him until he could do nothing else but sigh, and relax into the sheets. The pain of his headache fled and all words were forgotten save her name.

“Evelyn,” He murmured as she kissed back up the length of him, mouth sweet against the cleft in his hips and his abdomen and his scar again before finding his lips.

“How about now?” She asked nestling against him, the heat in her diffusing, simply pleased that he was pleased.

“About now what?” He slurred.

“Headache?”

“What headache?”

**

They were hauled in front of the Sunburst Throne, dragged there, chains looped about their wrists and necks. Both were covered in bruises and filth, the bones in their bodies broken and half-heartedly healed, inflicting the most pain but leaving them mostly whole.

The chapel turned courtroom erupted in boos and vicious jeering, hurling the vilest insults at them, specifically her.

“Mudskin!”

“Filthy mudskin!”

“Ape!”

“Whore!”

Though they be ringed in shackles, he could still reach and grasp her hand, threading his fingers between hers, sand and soil, sunlight and earth. An unspoken gesture that reverberated louder than the cries of their enemies.

I am here.

You are safe.

One of the Templars shoved an armored foot into the back of her knee, causing her to fall and him to fall with her. Forced down on their knees before the gilded chair, the seat of the Maker’s power on earth.

Vivienne no...Divine Victoria peered down on them from on high. Her face was no longer a mask of Iron but a mask of Gold, gilded in the robes and splendor of her power. She imagined that her friend had to change drastically in order for her to follow through with this Exalted March against the Inquisition, but looking at her now, Evelyn knew nothing had changed. Vivienne was still the powerful woman she had always been and that this was nothing more than a means to an end. Vivienne always played the Game, just now as the Divine, the pieces were bigger, the stakes were higher, and the blood ran thicker.

The Chantry howled and screamed, demanding that her Circle be changed and the mages within annulled. She stood against them, resolute, determined to change the world or die trying. They had no time to react or prepare when the March was declared against them. Troops arrived damn near overnight to siege the keep, cutting them off from resources or escape.

Victoria razed Skyhold to the ground massacring every last soul within. Everyone gone, erased, as though they never were. Evelyn and Cullen were captured in the Great Hall. His shield still high, and her arrows flying until they ran out.

The Lion and his Lady fell together, their forces no match for the sheer might of the Chantry.

When it was over, when everyone lay dead at their feet, they laced their hands together, waiting for the final blows to be struck.

But the Chantry would not let them die.

Not yet.

Not without an audience.

The Chancellors read from a long list, detailing their crimes. From apostasy to zealotry and just about every punishable offense between. She denied their accusations as she always had, stubbornly maintaining her innocence in the face of mounting scorn and derision. Cullen remained silent, knowing whatever came out of his mouth would only damn her further.

The church mothers had them locked up in adjacent cells, close enough to watch, close enough to reach but never touch as the brand new Templars, replete in the heraldry of Divine Victoria I, beat and tortured them in turn urging them to confess their sins.

They had no sins to confess only love and they’d gladly die for that.

And the Divine declared they would indeed die.

The block for him.

The pyre for her.

Victoria considered herself merciful and allowed that their last night could be spent together. They made love in the fetid darkness of their shared cell, guided by only by touch, by need, and by love.

His eyes never left hers as they came together, bodies pressing close and tight, bonded, skin on skin, soul on soul. He laughed amidst the filth, tickled by the curly ends of her vines brushing against his nose. She giggled when he nosed her neck, his scruff turned full beard tickling her sensitive skin.

They spent their last night living _alive_. Every soft sigh, every tender moan a protest. The Chantry can kill their bodies, destroy their names and reputation, but their love?

Beyond the lies spread and the history retold, only their loved remained, whole and untainted by revised truth.

She screamed for him when the headsman forced his neck down upon the block. She struggled and cried, stamped and kicked and spit and snarled. She was sound given living flesh and her voice carried across the field making every last witness feel the weight of her sorrow, her rage.

They beat her, mailed fist falling upon her again and again demanding she quiet but only a soft spoken word from her lion could make her silent.

“I have a request.” His voice gurgled, watery from the blood in his throat.

“Name it.” The Divine acceded from her seat.

“Let me burn with my lady.”

Vivienne nodded, considering herself merciful.

They were carried by cart to the pyre. Two poles stacked with enough kindling underneath to set the city alight and have it blaze for days.

A Chantry bell tolled the hour. Noon.

“When I met you at Haven, my first thought was that I wanted to take you out back behind the Chantry and have my wicked way with you.”

Their hands were bound but he reached for them, too many of his fingers crooked and broken.

"When I first met you, you were so loud with your hollering for luck I could barely hear myself think. It was only after that I realized I couldn’t keep my eyes off you."

"So it wasn't love at first sight?"

"No. Maybe second though." he smiled, blood in his teeth.

Two poles, one pyre. They were allowed to die facing each other. A punishment concocted to force them to watch as their lover's skin popped and sizzled in the flame but for them, they could ask for no better death.

The last thing she would hear would be his screams but at least she could die in his gaze. His gold would be in her eyes and that was the best she could hope for.

Victoria's herald began the pronouncement of death, listing their supposed sins and transgressions.

"Hurry the fuck up!" She called from her wooden post as they poured oil around them. “I have somewhere to be!"

Some in the crowd laughed, Cullen laughed too through his tears. Victoria's eyes twitched revealing emotion for the first time.

The torches came for her first, lit right under her feet.

"Cullen!" She called to him, her fear taking over her at the last.

"It's okay love, look at me, look at me!” His voice, clear and strong, sung out over the hammering of her heart, the screams of the crowd, and the crackling pop of burning wood. She focused on it, on him. He stood strong, upright, back pressed against the stake that held him. Fearless. “I love you Evelyn Trevelyan. Beyond all this, I will always love you."

The smoke and the flame rose higher, choking her, but she answered, voice as strong as his, as loud and as clear. “And I you, I love you Cullen Rutherford, my straw head, my lion.”

They smiled in the flames and never screamed, touched by what could only be the Maker’s Grace. Some in the crowd swooned, the rest began to shout for mercy, pressing against the twin pyres screaming at the Divine to release what could only be Andraste Herself and Her Golden Lion.

They began to boo and hiss at the Chancellors and the Chantry Mothers, they began to curse the Divine as their martyrs, saints burned.

But Evelyn didn’t hear the revolution sparking from her flames. She only heard his voice, singing to her as they were consumed.

"Draw your last breath, my love,” He sang, shifting back and forth as the flames burned his soles and ankles and up his legs. He did not flinch. He did not scream. But oh he sang, an angel singing their way home together.

“Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky.

“Rest at the Maker's right hand,

And be.."

His prayer was cut short by a bolt of lightning straight to the heart. Evelyn’s eyes followed the arc and found it emanating from the Divine’s own hand, a scowl on her face but tears in her eyes. Evelyn mouthed a silent thank you, untrusting of her voice because she didn't want to scream. Didn't want to give Vivienne neither the satisfaction of her agony nor the burden of it.

The witnesses shrieked, began pulling embers and torches from around her feet, hoisting them up in the air crying for justice, lighting everything they could reach on fire. They attacked the Chancellors, the Templars, the Divine herself. Others fell to their knees at her feet begging her forgiveness, promising her that her wishes would be fulfilled—that they will change the world in her stead… _in her name_.

But that didn’t matter. Confident swift death was flying, she turned her gaze towards her Lion. He was silent, slack against his bonds, but his eyes were open and on her, mouth curled in the faintest smile. A golden smile. There was gold in her eyes.

A bright flash of white light. There was a sharp stab of pain across her chest and then

Nothing.

Nothing but Gold.

**

She did not wake in gold but in the blue black darkness of early morning, Cullen hovering above her, his hands on her face.

“There you are sweetheart, come back to me.”

“Maker, I’m sorry Cullen, did I wake you?”

“It’s no bother.” He kissed her, easing her back down into the pillows, body relaxing even though the heat of him reminded her of the flames licking at her flesh.

Evelyn moaned, curling into him. He took her into his arms, running soothing hands up and down her back.

“Glad to have the shoe on the other foot for a change?” She mumbled dryly.

He kissed her hair shaking his head. “I’d rather we both be barefoot.”

Evelyn snorted, eased in earnest now.

“What did you dream of?” he asked idly.

“Exalted Marches, trials, she…they burned me.” She held Cullen tighter. “What if what I’m doing is wrong? We can’t fight the Chantry, not that way. So many lives… I can’t afford to make the wrong choice.”

“You aren’t. I believe in you, that what you’re doing is right.”

“And if I’m wrong? And if they burn me?”

“Then I’ll burn with you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may remember the execution scene from the Sneak Peak I posted way back when IDA ended. It's changed somewhat. It was one of the first things I wrote for the new story as I was captivated by the idea.


	7. Circle Skyhold

“Whatever happens, whatever they say, no one is to set foot on that dais or follow me after. This is all me and if it goes bad it’s my head.” She dressed severely, clad in her armor, her ceremonial sword buckled at her hip.

The whole of Skyhold assembled beneath her as she went over the words in her head one more time. She stood on the landing of stairs where they once declared her Inquisitor, where she raised that heavy and largely useless sword in the air and accepted the charge to save Thedas.

Word of the decree spread, there was thick pall of fear pressed against the people. They murmured and whispered, trying to guess what the Herald would say. Her friends stood behind her, each one fighting their own feelings about what would happen next.

Dorian, the only mage left among them, shifted nervously. He trained with Lady Anh Bao almost nightly and after the decree, the blood mage strangely resolute.

“I trust my Lady Herald. She has done so much for us already, she would not turn us back to bondage. She will fight this declaration, I have faith she will not abandon us.”

Dorian cut the practice session early, feeling guilty, sneaking from the only empty corner of the keep through the refugee tents, hoping not bring attention to what amounted to the snake in the chicken coop.

He worried for Evelyn’s safety. A move like this could rip Skyhold in half. Some mages would welcome the chance to return to the Circles no matter the form they took, others would fight against it, no matter the promises made.

And she’d be in the middle, the catalyst for all the chaos and potentially the first casualty.

Evelyn stepped forward, face changing from woman to Inquisitor.

“Not so long ago, war ripped this land to pieces. Mages against Templars. Mages against mages, templars against templars. Brother fighting sister fighting mother fighting son fighting friends. Blood soaked the stones and the grass and the streets, until they decided enough was enough. A Conclave was called to put an end to the fighting and the misery. But we all know what happened next. An evil, greater than the one permeating the land, arrived seeking to subjugate all of us, irrespective of status or title. We had to band together, overcome prejudice and hate to stop him. And we did. With your blood and sacrifice we saved our land, our lives, and our loved ones. And you should all be so proud of yourselves the way I am proud of you.”

Grand Enchanter Fiona led the cheer that rose from the people. They shouted and hollered, some mimicking her hunter’s cry for luck. She let them continue for a moment and they died down on their own, eager to hear the rest.

“The war is over now, but our struggle to protect the people is not.”

She nodded to Dorian who stepped forward, translating her next few words into Tevene.

“As long as there are sick and helpless. As long as there are people who need help and find none,  _I_ will remain. The Inquisition will remain to protect them. No matter the cost.”

Cullen stood taller, straighter. Proud that he could be a part of this, proud that a woman like her deemed him worthy of her affection. The elven freedmen cheered in trilling shouts, fists raised in the air, declaring her Liberata.

“My friends, by now you’ve heard the news. Divine Victoria I, a woman you and I used to know as Vivienne, Madame de Fer, has decreed that the Circles be reinstated.”

She paused waiting for their reaction. Another concerned murmur rippled through the gathered.

“Hush! Quiet!” Fiona hissed, anxious to hear what followed.

“If we go back to the way we were, nothing changes. The death of friends and family mean nothing. Which is why we will not go back but forward. We will change. We will progress. We will…”

She paused, heart and throat tightening.

“We will build a Circle the likes of which Thedas has never seen.”

Shouts erupted, a great cry went up. People began clamoring, screaming.

“By…” They tried to drown her out but she continued, summoning the true depth and reach of her powerful voice. “This Circle will be the first of its kind. Run by mages, led by mages. And only mages. No Chantry interference!”

The din lessened and the mages pressed forward straining to hear more.

“And what of templars!?” Someone shouted.

“Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him. Templars exist to serve mages. Not as boot on neck but hand in glove. Templars will return but they will be free of Chantry oversight and subject to their mage  _comrades_  not charges but  _comrades_. The Cirlces will be returned to their true purpose, to provide a safe place for mages to hone their craft, to learn it, to be taught how to use their  _gifts_. And the Inquisition’s Templars will be there to protect them from the potency of their gifts and the demons who would seek to turn their gifts against us all. No more tranquility, no more punitive punishments, no more phylacteries or apostate hunts. You are all free, you will always be free. And at any time  _you can walk away_. And as other Circles rebuild, it is my hope that they too adopt this form until all Circles are such!”

The courtyard quieted, silent as the sunrise, as they all absorbed the true meaning of her words. A mage run circle, staffed by templars who existed as nothing more as guardians against abominations. No longer compulsory and no longer for life. The Chantry no longer involved.

“This, my friends, is how we will change the world.” She stepped away from the edge of the landing and walked down the steps as the keep exploded yet again in noise and confusion. Some cheered some didn’t, but she was glad to hear that the sound of the cheering eclipsed the sound of the crying. Evelyn knew her little speech wouldn’t be enough to calm all suspicions and fears so, alone, she walked down into the people as they howled at her, wanting to address each question with her own mouth.

The people moved like water, surging and swirling around her, lapping at her with hands clapping her on her shoulders and her back. They shouted questions at her, she tried to put a face with every call but the press of bodies was too thick. As they shouted questions at her, she shouted answers back for all to hear.

“The Circle, will we be forced to join?”

“No, you may join if you wish or you may live free. Circles will be places for learning and a place of safety, never a prison. Never again.”

“And if we join must we stay?”

“No, you can leave at any time free of consequences.”

“Then why, why have them at all?”

“Mages do need a place to learn their craft, the same way I learned to shoot a bow and protect myself. I wasn’t born pre-equipped with that knowledge any more than you were. A mage run Circle is the best place for that kind of instruction.”

Not all the bellows were questions, some were accusations, threats. Voiced concerns that she tried to address as best she could.

“You give them too much power! What you suggest is heresy! We will be overrun with abominations, demons sent to feast on their pride! We will become another Kinloch!”

“No! That’s why there will be Templars.”

“Dogs with no teeth, without tranquility there will be no way to keep them in line.” There were angry murmurs of assent and dissent, a fight stirring within the crowd.

“The point isn’t to keep anyone ‘in line’ the point is to protect, guard against the legions of the Fade seeking entry into our world through a mage’s flesh. And to protect mages from assholes like you.”

Some malcontents seemed to take comfort in this and more than one mage cheered. Still there were more whose fear of Circles would never be shaken, who would protest and fight and struggle against them no matter what.

“My lady, my lady, please.” A pretty woman approached her, young, no more than 19 she guessed with eyes like a falcon in a dive. She fell to her feet, on her knees, grasping at Evelyn’s hands. A group of mages were behind her, all wide eye with panic. “You must reconsider. You do not know what it’s like. You don’t know the horrors or the suffering or the sadness. If you did, you’d never suggest a return to such life, even a reformed one. I believe you, I believe  _in_ you. Please don’t do this to us.”

The woman bowed her head and kissed her Herald’s hands over and over again. Her tears wet Evelyn’s fingers.

“You don’t have to stay.”

“Some of us have no place to go, you rescued us from the Void. Skyhold, the Inquisition, it is all we know.”

Evelyn’s heart constricted painfully in her chest and she fell to her knees, got on the ground with the woman to comfort her. “I can’t…I’m…to do anything else would be to risk…. This is the only way I know of to resist without standing in open defiance of the Chantry. I can’t fight them, there are too many lives that would be lost in that war.”

“You promised you’d protect us. You said we were your allies.” She moaned, heartbroken and faith shaken.

“And you are, you are. I’m sorry… I…this is all I can do. It will be different I swear to you. You have no cause to fear.”

“Of course she would send us back to the Circles!” An elven woman shouted behind her. “Look at her, she’s that templar Commander’s whore! Did he convince you of this with his cock in your mouth?” she spat, literally, the glob of it hitting her face. “Shemlen whore!”

Evelyn wiped away the filth and stood, gently pulling her hands away from the mage on her knees, cupping the crying face in a gesture of comfort. “The decision is mine and mine alone. Save your vitriol for me only, I earned it, but keep his name out of your fucking mouth!”

The elven woman’s companion whispered and consulted with her, urging her to calm her rage. They had to drag her away, bitter tears in her eyes.

“When?” The question wasn’t shouted but spoken softly, a body close to her in the crowd. Grand Enchanter Fiona, always pale and frail looking, she now had a curious glow about her eyes.

“Construction begins on the south tower retrofit tomorrow. Any of you who wish to leave, do so with my blessing and prayers for safe travels. And if the world still proves inhospitable, you will always be welcome here.”

“No. I do not wish to go.” The woman magically amplified her voice, projecting it to the entire crowd. “Let it be known that I, Grand Enchanter Fiona, will stay and lend my services to this grand project. Know that I do it out of the belief that the Herald of Andraste and Grand Inquisitor will honor her promise to protect us mages and keep us safe from a world that would stifle, destroy, or enslave us. You have put your faith in her before and she led us to victory. Do it again.”

Another cheer went up, this time accompanied by sparks of magic and colorful explosions. The whole of the keep cheered as though celebrating a great victory.

Amidst the cheers the Enchantress took Evelyn in a tight embrace whispering. “You have done me such a service the likes of which I can never, ever hope to repay. I am with you, Inquisitor. I believe in you.”

The women pulled away, Fiona’s face wet with grateful tears.

Evelyn didn’t know why.

**

With Fiona’s declaration, the assembly ended. The crowd dispersed, some to go about their business, others to pack their things.

Tired in body but invigorated in spirit, Evelyn returned to her friends, anxious to hear their take on what happened.

Cullen got to her first, wrapping her up in a tight hug. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud.”

“Of?”

“You. Me. That  _I_  get to Command  _your_  Inquisition. The honor is overwhelming.” He released her back to her comrades and immediately Iron Bull, swept her away to hiss in her ear.

“Don’t think I didn’t see what happened in there Boss.”

“It’s alright Bull. I can handle myself.”

“Aye, and that you did Inquisitor.” Cassandra smiled warmly, proudly. “I may still have my reservations but what you’ve done here, will echo through the ages.”

“Let’s hope for the right reasons.”

Cole shivered, holding himself tightly. “What’s the matter Cole?” B asked.

“I don’t hear so much anymore, I keep trying and they quiet down. But now, so many emotions, rolling and bubbling, it’s hard to…” He doubled over vomiting.

“Sera.” The elf looked at her, displeased yet not fully contemptuous. “Can you help Cole please? Get him back to the tavern or find an empty spot where there’s quiet. If you need to, take him to my quarters.”

“Yeah, whatever you say.” Sera answered curtly with a wave of her hand.

“You’re not happy with…?”

“Shit no, Not cuz a hatin’ mages, no. But because you’re takin’ a risk. People gonna get hurt. Most likely you. And you didn’t ask us first.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I gotta feelin’ you’re gonna be more sorry when this is all over. If it ever ends.” Sera carried Cole away, soothing him with jokes the boy couldn’t quite understand.

“I agree,” Krem added. “Our elven guests from what I could hear are wary. They come from a place where mages rule cruelly, using their power to subject those without it. This, to them, looks like the same shite on a different day. But also from what I can tell, they believe in you, some of them even pledging to fight for you. You heard what they called you?”

“Liberata right? What does it mean?”

“In Tevinter, when a slave is granted freedom by another, the slave will sometimes grant the freer the title Liberata and that person becomes almost a mythic figure. Someone they remember almost reverently. I’ve even heard some of them talking, wanting to join us. They want to serve you.”

“Well that’s fortunate.” Dorian quipped, sarcasm thick in his tone. “Lose an army of mages and gain and army of former slaves.”

“Are you afraid, ‘vint?” Krem challenged. “Worried you might find yourself outnumbered for a change?”

“I’ve always been outnumbered when it comes to good taste and devastating charm and wit.”

Krem snorted, walking away before he could laugh.

Dorian exhaled, shoulders slumping. “Funny, dry humor always worked before.”

“Don’t worry about him, kadan, he’ll come around.” Bull encouraged. “Say, you wanna join me for a drink? Boss, bring Other Boss, you guys look like you could use the diversion.”

“And as much as I think we all could use a good stiff drink after something like that, I find I am needed elsewhere.” Dorian passed a look to the mage with the birdlike eyes from earlier. She nodded shuffling away, Dorian chasing after her.

The Iron Bull deflated before puffing back up with false bravado. “Your loss. Boss?”

“Sure Bull let me….”

“Inquisitor? May…May I have a word please?”

Josephine’s thick Antivan accent broke with the hesitancy of her request. Evelyn sighed, tossing her head towards the tavern, indicating to both men they should go on without her.

Her Commander squeezed her hand. “You did beautifully, Inquisitor.”

“Of course I did,”

A half smile pulled on the corner of B’s cheeks as Cullen raised her hand to his mouth in a courtly kiss that promised more later.

“We await you, my lady.”

Beyond, Josephine made a soft little whine, distressed, like a mouse caught in a trap. Her hair hung loose and slightly curled, a departure from her usual style of braids and buns.

“What do you need Josephine?” Evelyn asked, the question wasn’t friendly. Just exasperated, weary even. That had been difficult even without the slurs and the spitting.

“I…I wanted to congratulate you on…your speech. You know I offered to help but…”

“What I needed to say needed to come from me alone but thank you Ambassador, for the offer.”

Josephine cut her eyes to the ground and she shifted nervously, fearfully.

“Look, I know our budget…”

“No…no, for what it’s worth, I agree with you on this.”

“A first in a while.”

Josephine tried to laugh but it caught in her throat as a sob and Evelyn finally saw the true distress in her friend’s eyes. “Josie. What is it?”

The sound of her nickname broke the woman and tears spilled from her eyes. “I wanted… I knew with everything going on you wouldn’t…and we haven’t been…”

Evelyn hugged Josephine. “Spit it out girl.”

“It’s Blackwall…”

Evelyn pulled away. “What about? I haven’t seen him lately, figured he was sick or too caught up in his woodwork. But I’ve been pre-occupied so…”

Josephine sputtered, tears flowing freely. She was an exquisite woman on a good day, on a bad one she was devastating in her beauty.

“He’s gone.” The papers in Josie’s hands shook. “I tried, investigating myself. I knew with the Divine and the freedmen and everything else you wouldn’t want distractions but…Oh Maker… He’s gone and he didn’t tell me where he was going. He only left this.”

Evelyn opened the offered parchment, crinkled and stained with tears. Some fresh from its reader, some older, dried watermarks in the paper from its writer.

_My Lady,_

_It grieves me to leave you like this, but I find I can no longer remain as my sins hang over me. I have gone to Val Royeux to confront them and whatever consequences arise. Do not look for me, I do not wish to have you further sullied by my filth. Please, sweet Josephine, no matter what you hear, what happens, or what they say about me, know that I love you. My feelings, bumbling and unworthy as they were, were genuine. Every word I uttered to you save one was truth. If you remember me as the Blackwall_ _you_ _knew, then I can die a happy man, content to have spent at least some time happy in your arms. I wish for you a happy life, a happy marriage to some lordling, and many children who are as whip smart and beautiful as you are. And if that is not to be, take comfort in knowing my shade watches over you, ready to protect you with my shield even in death._

_Yours Forever,_

_Warden Blackwall_

“How long?” Evelyn asked.

“About a week and a half ago this was left on my pillow along with…” She opened her hand revealing a tiny wood-carved griffon wings unfurled in flight. “I tried to find him on my own but…wait…Inquisitor!”

“No time to wait, call Cullen and Bull back from the tavern, have them meet me at the stables ready to ride. It takes about a week to get to Val Royeaux from here if you ain’t rushing. We gotta ride hard and fast and right now if we’re gonna catch him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. Plot okay!


	8. Revelations

“That’s a startling coincidence my lady, I received a letter a few days before all this happened. I was going to ignore it thinking it unimportant but now this.” Cullen called rearing his mount as he, Iron Bull and the Inquisitor arrived in the capital of Orlais making excellent time, travelling the week long distance in 5 days as they didn’t have Vivienne’s daintiness or Dorian’s complete inability to fucking ride holding them back.

“What was it?”

“A letter detailing the capture and soon to be execution of a man named Cyril Mornay.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of cheese in Denerim?”

“Well it said this Mornay was involved in a massacre that took the lives of the entire Callier family in Orlais. From what I can recall there was a huge uproar, some said Duke Gaspard ordered the bloody deed himself but he disavowed it. No matter why, its perpetrators are universally reviled here. But all those who have been captured say they were following the orders of a man named Thom Rainier who was never found.”

“Cyril Mornay you say ser?” The stablemaster spit the name like a curse.

“Yes. Have you heard of him?”

“It’s a good thing you came when you did, otherwise you’d find the city shuttered to all business. I’m goin’ down to the Grand Square soon to watch him hang.”

“Lead us.” Evelyn commanded grimly.

**

Evelyn watched them lead the gaunt looking man up the steps to the noose that meant to hang him. She kept glancing about for Blackwall, looking for signs of his beard in the crowd. But as the chevalier read the charges outloud, she stopped looking, horror growing in the pit of her stomach.

“Cyril Mornay, for your crimes against the empire of Orlais the murders of General Vincent Callier, Lady Lorette Callier, their four children and their retainers…”

“Maker’s fuck. The entire family?”

“Yes,” a woman moaned, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “They were such sweet people, the Maker’s very best, butchered like cattle by this man and Thom Rainier, may his soul never know peace.”

She spat as Rainier’s name passed her lips.

“I’m getting really fucking tired of all the damn spitting.” Evelyn chuffed, annoyed still feeling the sensation in her skin where that woman spat on her. “You are hereby sentenced to be hanged from the neck until dead.”

A great cheer went up at the pronouncement, an ominous clap of thunder reverberating with the jeers as rain began to fall. Evelyn swayed a little on her feet, the memory of her own ‘execution’ still rolling around just behind her eyes, ready to assault her whenever she closed them.

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?” The chevalier closed the death warrant and waited, listening.

Mornay said nothing, resigned to his fate.

“Very well.” The chevalier decreed, signaling to the executioner to prepare the man for his drop.

“Stop!” A thick voice cut across the square outstripping the crack of thunder that followed it.

“This man is innocent of the crimes pronounced against him. Orders were given and he followed them like any good soldier. He should not die for that mistake!”

“Holy fucking shit Blackwall!” Evelyn fought the bodies to make her way to the gibbet. Blackwall looked down, stricken for a moment, looking to see if anyone else had come to witness his shame laid bare.

“No I am not Blackwall, I never was Blackwall. Warden Blackwall is dead and had been for years.”

“We talkin’ metaphorically or…” Iron Bull joked, attempting to inject levity as the situation slowly spiraled into incoherent madness.

“I assumed his name to hide like a coward from who I really am.”

Evelyn felt a sickness spreading in her gut. She was no seer but she could predict his next words and desperately wished she was wrong. “Oh please don’t say what I think you will.”

“It’s over, I’m done hiding. I gave the order, the crime is mine. I am Thom Rainier.”

The loudest crash of thunder swallowed up all her foulest curses.

**

Evelyn let Rainier stew for a day in his prison cell as she wrestled with what to do next. The chevaliers kept him in the coldest, dampest, and deepest cell in the prison. Rot festered on the walls and filth dripped from the ceilings. Though he’d only been incarcerated a day, the warden impostor looked hollow eyed and hollow cheeked, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His usually well-groomed beard grew wild and unkempt, shaggy, infested even.

Good.

Blackwall or whoever the fuck he was looked like a beaten dog, and Evelyn did not come to soothe those hurts. He kept his head down, misty blue grey eyes studying the floor as she studied him, fighting between rage and grief.

After too long and awkward a pause, the man spoke. “I didn’t take his life, the real Blackwall. Only traded his death. He wanted me for the Wardens. He told me to go into a cavern that lead to the Deep Roads, kill a darkspawn, bring back its blood. I’d done all of that and when I came back he was fighting more of the creatures. I ran to join him, he took a blow for me. He died. And I took his name to stop the world from losing a good man.”

“No, it already lost that good man when Blackwall died.”

He flinched, silently conceding the point. “Aye…but a good man, the man he was wouldn’t let another die in his place.”

“You lied to me.”

Evelyn’s spoke calmly, scaring Rainier and herself. He knew she wasn’t beyond a scream or a shout if provoked, and Maker knew the woman had a temper. Blackwall saw the fury in her eyes and in her balled fists. Saw it in her anxious pace, her boots clipping the stones with a methodical click. But he couldn’t hear it in her voice because whatever her wrath was, if she let it loose...

“I did, everything they said was true, it’s time everyone got a good look of who I really am.” Blackwall smacked his hands against his bars. Unnerved by her serenity in her fury, he let his overtake him.

“I took the order, I gave it, I lied to my men about what they were doing. When it came to light I ran. Those men, my men, paid for their treason while I was pretending to be a better man. I am a murderer, traitor, a monster.”

His temper triggered her own and what she contained she released upon him. A deluge to match the one dripping from outside upon his head.

“You wanna smack some walls huh? That’s what you wanna do?!” She banged back against the bars harder, startling him, making him flinch and trip back onto the disgusting mattress that was his bed.

“What you did was truly fucked but you didn’t have to lie to me. We are the Inquisition, we have to be above reproach. Especially now! Especially with everyone watching us!  If you had told me, we could have worked with it. Used Josephine to get out in front of it, head off any naysayers but no! You had to LIE! You've tainted us all, with your crime and your lie! Put us all in danger!”

Blackwall, shamed, turned his face to the wall.   
  
“Guards!”

Blackwall flinched at her bark, ready but still afraid of her pronouncement of guilt.

Two chevaliers arrived, silver masks dulled by the creeping darkness.

"Yes Lady Inquisitor. Shall we take him to the gallows?"

"No. You give him to me."

Blackwall's face slackened in shock and the guards protested angrily. "Inquisitor, surely you can't mean..."

"He is my Grey Warden, and I need him. Release him to me. I will judge him formally at Skyhold.”

Caught in fear’s fist, Blackwall panicked. "No, I don’t deserve…”

"No, you don't. But if you think I'm going to let you rot in here. If you think I'm going to let you get out of explaining yourself to Josephine, you know me even less than what you thought you did, when you thought lying to me would be a good idea."

**

Cullen doubled the usual number of guards used for a prisoner’s escort, the only way he could show his contempt without outright stabbing the man. Before he could be led into Skyhold’s Grand Hall, the Commander cuffed him on the arm savagely.

"You've proven the type to do anything for coin. If I find you’ve betrayed Evelyn, if I find any of your old personality traits have come back, not even her grace will protect you from me.”

Rainier shook the Commander’s hand off him. “Cease your barking Ferelden pup! She has been a trusted friend. Given me the wisdom to know right from wrong and the courage to uphold the former. I’d never do anything that might have brought her,” the door to the hall swung open, the Inquisitor…and Josephine stood at the end of it. “Either of them harm!”

Josephine wept happy tears when the letter arrived stating Blackwall lived. She dried them when she learned what he had done and who he was. The Lady Montilyet knew the Game as well as the Lady Trevelyan did. Women like them, born to nobility, must be able to turn their hearts on and off, like a match to a candle or a puff to blow it out. She blew out the candle in her heart, the one that burned for Blackwall, to prepare herself for what must come next.

He must die. The Game demanded it. Half of Orlais would come down upon their heads if he lived to see the sunset, not to mention the alliances and the revenues that could be lost by alienating those Orlesian supporters.

She had feelings for the man, far far greater than what she had for any man or woman who came before him. She knew when she took his hand that fateful night that their relationship could never grow beyond quiet embraces and passionate sighs hidden in pillows and duvets. Josephine had been foolish. She should have killed the flower he made bloom in her chest with the frosts of her duty and obligations. But she let it grow, let it overtake her, encouraged by notions that maybe, if she played the Game right, if she negotiated right, she could trade a Lord husband for a Warden husband.

But he wasn’t even a Warden.

He was a murderer.

And despite that, much to her growing sickness, she couldn’t hate him. She took his letter to heart. She wanted to remember the Blackwall she knew. The kind, gentle man who was found training boys in the forest to protect their families against bandits. The man who helped her nurse an orphaned lamb back to health, who left little leaves of Orlesian poetry littered in the drawers of her desk. Who left vases of flowers on for her and blushed when he saw her wearing them in her hair.

For all he had done, he did more to make up for it. And when his sins would have been buried with the last man who knew the truth, he did the right thing, ready to take his rightful spot on the gallows.

To see him again was a favor she hadn’t asked for, but was grateful to have.

“Josephine,” Evelyn came to her before the judgement. “You don’t have to do this.”

“No. I do. I have… I want to see him. I want him to know that I forgive him.”

“Are you alright?”

“No. Yes…maybe. Whatever you decide Inquisitor…Evelyn…I will…I will accept. He is yours to do with as you wish.”

“Do you love him Josephine?”

Her candle sparked unbidden.

“Desperately.”

**

Whatever death would be decided for him this day, nothing could be worse than seeing the look on Josephine’s face when they led him down to face the Inquisitor.

There were Orlesians here, come from their villas and villages to see the pronouncement upon him, their faces were twisted in sickening glee. Eager to watch his blood fly or his body twist in a hangman’s noose. There were others here too, eyeing him with equal parts anger and disgust.

His comrades were here. Cassandra, Varric, Iron Bull, Dorian, Sera, Leliana, Cole, and Cullen, contempt plain on most of their faces.

The Inquisitor herself was a stone, unreadable. No doubt finding the best way to serve his head back to Celene and the rest.

But sweet Lady Josephine, hers was the only face with a smile, given all and only for him. Forgiveness given without a word, without apology or explanation. And he could not bear it. She deserved better, he demanded better for her. But there she was, smiling for him, loving him in spite of everything, murderer and all.

Rainier’s heart ceased in her smile and he suspected that this was his true punishment--to have to look her in the eye as he died.

For die he must.

“I didn’t think this would be easy but it’s harder than I thought.” The Inquisitor started, leaning forward on her throne.

“Another thing to regret.”  He answered. “Among a long list of others.” He cast a look to Josephine, her eyes never wavered and her smile never faltered.

“You don’t owe me your regret.”

She knew, damn her.

“I accepted my punishment. I was ready for this to end. Why did you bring me here? To torture me further? Twist the knife before you drive it home?”

“You had debts to pay here, I would see them paid Blackwall… Rainier. I guess we’ll have to have a discussion of what you are to be called from now on.”

“What?”

Josephine’s parchment, quill, and writing board clattered to the floor. The only sound in a Hall stunned to silence.

“You have your freedom.” His judge stated simply, easily, as if the decree were obvious to all.

A startled gasp ripped through the hall, several onlookers rose their voices to protest. Cullen had them removed immediately.

“It…it cannot be as simple as that.”

“It isn’t. Everyone’s so ready to die for their crimes when it’s harder to live with them. Your punishment is to atone as the man you are, not the traitor you were or the man you pretended to be.”

Blackwall dared a look at Josephine.

Sweet Josephine still smiled, now with tears.

“Have you anything to say?”

“If my future is mine, I pledge it to the Inquisition. My sword is yours.”

“Take your post then soldier.”

Her guards struck the chains from him and walked away.

Thom Rainier was free.

**

As the hall emptied, Josephine remembered how to walk and rushed to the Inquisitor.

“Inquisitor! Why? This will ruin relations with Orlais. He was…is…was a wanted criminal, hated throughout. You have stolen their justice. Any judgement less than death will be seen as tacit approval if not endorsement of his crimes and as for his actual crimes…”

Evelyn placed a hand on Josephine’s shoulder, quieting her.

“Josephine. I’ve got a qunari spy in my company, a slaveholding Tevinter Altus, a mage abusing ex-templar, a Red Jenny…Maker’s ass a Red fucking Templar too. Each one of them with sins as black as the rest. Some more so, some less. And all of them, here and now through their actions have proven themselves to me and to the Inquisition. Rainier was no different. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I could let all those people slide and not him?”

“The intelligent kind, the one who won’t squander her Orlesian patrons.”

“I know we’re cutting it close. Between Lord Montblanc and this, I’m not gonna have very many friends. But that’s why I have you, Josie. You tell me what I need to know, what I need to do to keep this thing floating.”

Josie sniffed, chuckling through light sobs as her tears dried up. “You haven’t listened to me yet, you are quite stubborn.”

“I know, but I will now. I trust you, I trust your judgement. We may not agree always but that is fact. I trust you to do the best for the Inquisition. And I need you to continue to do that. Get me out of this mess I created. Can you do that for me?”

“Of course, Evelyn. And thank you. Thank you so much. You can’t understand what this means to me.”

Evelyn shrugged off her gratitude with a shake of her head.

“I just couldn’t watch him swing Josie. I wasn’t gonna let you watch him swing either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everything!


	9. Blood and Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go.  
> TW: Self harm but not expressly for the intention of harming. If that makes ANY sense.

The consequences didn’t manifest quite so obviously and they took place over time. Slowly, little by little, as the walls on the south tower were rebuilt and made ready for habitation, mages left the keep, singly, and in groups. 

Though as some mages left, more came to fill their spaces. Apostates in hiding heard of her decree and came to Skyhold looking for a safe place.

Templars too, those who survived. They found their swords, shields, and faith again and knelt at the Inquisitor's feet, pledging themselves to her service and her rules.

Cheese became harder to come by.

So did her favorite scent of soap.

The tents her soldiers slept in had to be patched with discarded scraps of cloth or their holes simply remained as linen shipments got more and more expensive, outstripping simple supply and demand, blowing over into outright price gouging.

The keepers of her Orlesian lands started making excuses about late or absent revenue payments, a phenomena that never once happened in the two years Skyhold owned the properties.

To support the extra mouths, meals were reduced from three times a day to two and field rations had to be cut by another quarter. Krem’s jokes about the Iron Bull’s chest girth dried up, as did the skin on the elven children that he played with in the open spaces he could find. Yet all the elves suffered silently, used to such leanness. Evelyn cried in dark hidden spaces, where no one could see, knowing that despite all this, Skyhold was better than an alienage.

Grand Enchanter Fiona was unanimously elected to be the Senior Enchanter of Circle Skyhold. She set to work immediately with Evelyn and the builders, discussing and planning the layout of her new home.

Samson took well to the labor, unbothered by the heat or the long hours or the backbreaking work required of him. The Lady Herald moved him from his cell to a little room not far from where the new tower stood. Still guarded though, but mostly for his protection rather than anything else.

Months of peace did not cool the ire some felt for the former general, the man who murdered their friends and comrades. More than once Cullen had to pull his men off Samson after either he or they started some kind of conversation that ended in flying fists and split lips.

“Leave ‘em Commander. Peaches’ fuzz they are, couldn’t throw a punch if their life depended on it.”

The Inquisitor could though, and she popped him good suggesting that if he wanted to fight he should pick one with her or Cullen and not her soldiers.

Which was how he found himself now, laying in the dirt, the Lady Herald and her Commander standing over him, smirking in twin grins that looked so much alike it made him sick.

Cullen offered a hand up and he batted it away. “I can stand on my own.”

“You said you wanted your strength back Raleigh. And you told her not to go easy on you.”

“Aye, but Andraste’s flaming knickers she hits like a druffalo.”

“She drinks like one, she snores like one.” Cullen agreed.

B scrunched her face, embarrassed, before clapping back with her own wit. “Commander, maybe you can help him out with his problem, since he needs someone with a _lighter_ touch.”

Raleigh guffawed as Cullen muttered something unintelligible about showing her how light of a touch he had later.

“As much as I’d like to assist you Raleigh,” Cullen groused salvaging what little of his pride he had left. “I have some training with Iron Bull. You’re welcome to join us, I’m sure he hits hard enough.”

“Might as well.”

The two men left her and Evelyn caught Dorian emerging from that same secluded spot of the keep, rarely trafficked and sparely appointed.

“Dorian!”

Dorian waved and she waved him over. It was early afternoon, Skyhold firmly gripped in summer’s heat. Dorian had been training with Lady Anh Bao for while now and he took to her instruction well. Blood magic came frightening easy to him, he could stitch a wound far faster and far better than he ever could with restorative magic.

Dorian appreciated the irony, found it justified in its poetry. His father once told him that Blood Magic was the last resort of the feeble minded before he turned that feeble mind and blood magic against his son. Then that son, already twice burned by the lesson, takes to blood magic like…well like a magister to blood magic. Yet, the irony didn’t swallow bitter, in fact it went down almost sweet. Here the much maligned Tevinter magister using blood magic in a way far outside what anyone would think a magister (altus!) would use it for. Not for petty gain, not for power, but for protection. For salvation. Dorian thrived on being contrarian so this was just another cut on his hand. Literally.

“Promise me Ser Pavus that you will only use these talents for good.” Anh Bao snickered as she admired her newly healed arm, the injury she self-inflicted leaving behind only the faintest scars. When his skill improved, he'll leave behind no scars. When they started practicing with their own flesh, Dorian almost fainted when he saw her easily and nonchalantly draw the blade across her skin. He was further shocked to find her long and rich robes, draped crosswise over her body and embroidered with such intricate design he’d never seen before on a mage’s robes, covered a body scored with scars, though most were earned at a templar's hand.

“They Silence you, then they beat you. Making you unable to heal yourself. I discovered blood magic while I was lying on a floor, bleeding to death. It came to me, like the Herald came to us, a miracle. I was so afraid of dying, so full of fear and so _hungry_ for life, those emotions changed me. The blood on the floor sucked back into me, and little by little I was restored. I have been practicing on myself ever since, using my gifts to heal others in need.”

“And they never notice?”

“A man dying does not care from whence his salvation comes,” Anh Bao added. “And usually, with injury so dire, they do not remember.”

The first time Dorian took the knife to his skin he shook so much he cut far deeper than intended.

He almost fainted as he focused on the pain, focusing on easing it, removing it, as Lady Anh Bao encouraged him, ready to step in should he fail.

The wound healed in a tiny scar that Iron Bull noticed immediately.

“Cut myself on a nail,” Dorian explained.

“Kadan, you squirrel away and stay gone fuck knows where, then you come back with injuries and say ‘you cut yourself on a nail.’? I’m insulted that you think I’m supposed to buy that. What happened to ‘not clamming up’ huh? That only work one way? Your way?”

“It’s not what you think Bull.”

Iron Bull kissed him, sweet and stinging, teeth doing more work than lip or tongue.

“No, I don’t think anything about it. Because I _trust you_ to tell me whatever it is whenever you’re ready.”

It was blood magic. No matter the reason, no matter the intent, blood magic was blood magic and therefore considered abominable to man and his Maker, the greatest of taboos. Eventually, he would have to let the secret spill. Though the how and the when eluded him. He needed to perfect it more, show them he could control it the way she could. More pressing though, was the state of his instructor. Lady Anh Bao after the Great Decision, grew more and more agitated and withdrawn, fearful of every shadow and every raised voice.

“Anh Bao.” Dorian placed a tender hand on his teacher’s shoulder. She was in the middle of explaining something when tears suddenly sprang unbidden from her eyes. “Are you okay? I know you hate templars for what they did to you. Evelyn is not asking you to stay if you can't. You can leave. Others have already.”

“Skyhold is my home, I have no other place to go. I trust my Lady Herald. She has made up her mind now, but I trust the Maker will guide her to the right decision.”

“You trust her that much?”

“Yes. I have to. She has never let me down.”

Under her careful instruction and Dorian’s natural proclivity towards the specialization, he could now set a bone and heal a scratch. Internal injuries were nothing to him if the happy lick the dog gave him was any indication. They didn’t run around catching animals to hurt, but Master Dennet and Joseph found their infirmary stalls less populated than usual. The animals that used to reside there bounced, clopped, and bleated along as though all were well.

“Lady Bao, I've been thinking, perhaps we should involve the Inquisitor at this point. We've had to move our practice rooms twice now. It's going to be harder to keep this a secret as space becomes less and less ava--- WHAT IN THE VOID ARE YOU DOING!” The woman casually held a knife over her stomach, poised to plunge it deep into her gut.

“You said you were ready to tackle bigger, this is bigger.”

“Maker's breath put the knife down!”

“I trust you Dorian. You are ready. You will save me.”

“While I appreciate your level of trust I must protest. There were no consequences if a horse or a pig died. There will be consequences if _you_ die!”

“Then make sure I don't die.” Anh Bao returned plainly, then stabbed herself in the stomach.

Her eyes rolled back into her head as her hands slipped from the knife, leaving it lodged within her.

“Oh no no no NO!” Dorian screamed, crossing the empty room to clutch her before she fell. He ripped the knife out of her, pressing his hands to her gushing wound. He tried to concentrate, tried to focus on undoing the damage done but nothing worked.

Anh Bao gasped, moaning softly, careful even as she lay dying in Dorian’s arms not to grasp at his robes with bloody hands. They tried to keep themselves clean, didn't want to invite questions.

“Anh Bao! Anh BAO!”

He panicked, forgetting all his training. Fear overcame him, settling on him, an embrace of cold hands gripping his shoulders. Fear's frozen scream warbling in his ears.

“Please don’t do this to me. Anh Bao! I can’t do this. I can’t! I’m taking you to the healers, we have to tell them. I can’t!”

As he ran for the door, the whites of his eyes began to turn red. An eerie calm settled on him, not replacing his fear but complimenting it. He felt it in his magic, literally pulsing in his blood. ‘Please don’t die’ became ‘I will not let you die’. Anh Bao stilled, her gasping evened to full breaths. Dorian no longer felt the blood pulsing rhythmically out of her with every beat of her heart. He still felt wetness, blood sliding under his fingers but the stream reduced to a trickle and that trickle reversed its course back into her body.

Anh Bao found her voice. “Dor- do not focus, feel. Blood magic is... passion, emotion. Fear and anger, love and sadness, those feed your magic, make it potent. Your loved one is injured. Your love restores them. Your enemy assaults you, your anger destroys them. We do not control or consort with the demonic, we give of ourselves for the sake of others. ‘Maker’s love has no one greater than this,’” Anh Bao quoted of the Chant. “’That a person give up their life for a friend’.”

Lady Bao sat up, finding her feet. Her black robes were soaked with blood, the stain radiating from the tear in the fabric, but the skin beneath was whole, not even a scar remained.

Mouth wide open in awe, Dorian reached for the wound. “May I?” He asked.

Anh Bao nodded and Dorian swiped his hand over her belly feeling the smooth unbroken flesh there. A mortal wound reversed. A life saved.

Had he known this months ago, Cullen may not have come so close to death that time in the Arbor Wilds. He might have been able to make their journey through the crystal nightmare of the Shrine of Dumat easier. The elven refugees they found might not have recoiled from him, shrieking in pain because of his ineptitude. He could help them now, he could ease their suffering.

“You've done it Ser Pavus. You are a blood mage, but more than that. You are a healer.”

The mage smiled as the red in his eyes returned to white.

Dorian felt an amalgam of pride and guilt stinging his heart and filling it overflowing. He learned something, studied hard and perfected it, something a self-proclaimed scholar should be proud of. But he learned at the cost of his trust and his friends. Iron Bull was no one’s fool, not even his, and it hurt him to see the wounds in his eyes whenever he begged off quality time in favor of Anh Bao's magical instruction. But Bull never pried or pressed, so trusting of him even though it hurt.

Sorora too. Lately he had no time for her, choosing instead to secretly pour over whatever tomes he could find in the library about blood magic, trying to find some precedent, some archaic loophole that would absolve him of his guilt.

Dorian was not evil. The same way Anh Bao wasn't. Helping was their only desire. Blood magic was a way to help. A way to save. A way to prove within himself that not all Tevinters were the decadent mages the world thought of them. There were other reasons too, deep seeded and selfish. He chose to leave those behind for now.

“But I guess I am a maleficar, by strictest definition anyway.” He grumbled as  Sorora approached.

“Well met stranger,” Evelyn gave a half hug to her friend. Dorian smiled tightly, still brooding over when and how he should tell the truth, because one day soon, he’d have to tell his best friend and his lover he was a blood mage.

“You’re looking mighty chipper for a woman about to go broke.”

Evelyn heaved a sigh that sounded like the weight on her shoulders just now shifted and settled a little too heavy.

“Maker, I’m sorry, that was cruel even for me.”

“No, it’s alright. It’s the truth anyway.”

Brother and Sister walked the open courtyard as mages and templars trained together side by side. Some chose to remain sequestered, segregated. Evelyn did much to inspire faith in this new working arraignment but old prejudices always died hard. The first month alone she exiled several templars and mages for their inability to cooperate and their insistence on stirring violence. Those who remained, adhered to the rules quickly or found themselves on the wrong end of Commander Rutherford's sword or Senior Enchanter Fiona's staff.

As they walked, enjoying a moment of company, they passed a group of templars who bowed, offering various greetings punctuated with her titles of Inquisitor, Herald, and Your Worship.

“I didn't think there were any templars left.”

“Nor I, I'm glad they weren't all wiped out. Though some find Vivienne’s company better suited.”

“And the ones that are here don't mind living in the same Keep where the man that corrupted their Order walks around a semi-free man?”

“Oh no they mind. But they have the good sense to keep it to themselves. Raleigh is earning his way back into the light. More than a few of them are willing to let him be as he does. Those that aren't, Cullen deals with.”

“That's so like you, chuck the crying children in a corner and force them to get along.”

“Worked with you and Iron Bull.”

Dorian grinned. “Seems that way.”

“Yeah, but for how long?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone's leaving me Dorian. Solas is gone, Vivienne is gone. I'm losing supporters left and right. Who else is gonna go?  I already know you will go back to Qarinus. Back to your estates and your riches.  You’re gonna get tired of roughing it with me, especially now that the good wine is so hard to get.”

“I won't insult your intelligence by telling you I won't. But Tevinter lacks the presence of my best and only friend. It'll keep, while I stay a while longer. We have to do something about the state of your wine cellar."

Evelyn smiled and hugged Dorian's arm. “You're a hero. You're my hero. A brother found when I lost my other one. I hope you stay. And I hope you're happy. Do you even want to go back?”

“Yes, eventually. Seeing you, what you've done, what you're trying to do.” Elven children ran across their path, three of them stopped and curtsied to the Inquisitor calling her Amata Liberata-- Beloved Savior. They took half of Dorian's heart with them when they ran away. “I owe it to my homeland to make the same effort. The Imperium can change, it needs to. Slavery and rampant corruption has no place in this world anymore yet...”

Dorian's eyes found the other half of his heart. Iron Bull, pulling Cullen and Raleigh out of the dirt after he knocked them both over.

“There's no place for a magister with a qunari lover is there? It's different _down here_. Up there is another story.”

Dorian nodded. “One you and I both know very well Sorora. Varric really should be writing that book about us. Forget mages and templars, magisters and qunari, now that's a story for the bards.”

“You're an altus.” Evelyn laughed.

“I know!” Dorian agreed.

“What will you do, have you two talked about it?”

“We don't talk about it very much because we both know that's where it ends. There's just no place for me in his world or him in mine. That's why I'll always fight for the Inquisition if I can Evelyn. You made a world for us here and I've never been happier with you, with Bull, all of us. There will be a time when I have to go, but it won't be today or tomorrow. And I hope in the time I have left here, I can be useful to you.”

“Yeah speaking of useful, how's your healing spells? I've heard reports in the Frostback Basin that I wanna....”

Evelyn stopped, losing her train of thought, a dull pain pulsing at the base of her head, the makings of a headache.

“You want to?”

“Oh right...I want to investigate the...what did you say?”

“I didn't say anything. Getting senile in you're old age?”

Evelyn shook her head, the motion only amplifying the pressure in her skull. “Just a headache that's all you asshole. Anyway, scouts are reporting...”

She stumbled, tripped on nothing, pitching forward, almost landing in the dirt.

“Evelyn?”

“Get out.”

“Wha-.”

Evelyn pressed hands to her ears. The pressure turned to soft buzz, that buzz turned to a shout, that shout started to scream, that scream felt like knives in her head, stabbing over and over with the same message.

“Get out! Get out get out get out!” The noise chased her, bore down upon her. She ran from him, head thrown back and a scream tearing from her throat.

Pain sliced up her insides cutting her guts to ribbons. She felt phantom icy cold claws rip her open from the inside out.  She felt blood seeping from the corners of her eyes, from her nose, dribbling from her mouth as she felt as though she were being torn open. She opened her mouth to scream again but it came as only a choked gargle of blood.

“Evelyn!”

The bodies in the courtyard swarmed, like bats or flies or vultures, closing in to gape at the horror.  Dorian felt the blood well in his eyes as he fought against the crowd to get to her, fear fueling his magic.

Cullen laughed with his friends as they trained together, stealing glances at B as she walked with Dorian. Her hair had grown, vines that ended at her shoulders now grew beyond it. The rainstorm she released when she untied them from her buns now sounded like a thunderstorm. It was his nightly privilege to undo the ties that held them up, exulting in the sounds they made and she made when her hair was let loose.

She could be a troll though, and he would still love her. Her heart, her mind, her daring spirit, Oh Maker, what he wouldn't do to be half of what she was.

So when he heard her scream his heart stopped and he moved toward her without thought.

“Boss!” Iron Bull cried behind him, hearing the anguished shout.

Raleigh aided them, pushing back the crowd of lookers on, the courtyard choked with tents and refugees and so many obstacles. Had he more than a wooden sword he would have cut his way through.

“Move you whoresons! Move!”

Her hands were wrapped around her waist, literally trying to hold herself together, she fell to her knees.

Hands were at her, fists, beating, crashing upon her. His touch was slivers of glass in the skin, his voice hurling horrible curses in her ears.

Gareth Trevelyan, unable to hold back his volcanic, wine fueled rage, finally come to beat her to death.

Moved by sheer survival, Evelyn feebly scrambled away as the fists gave way to feet, a boot heel crushing her back, his dark face inches from her as he beat her senseless.

_Father! Stop! I’m sorry! Father please! Cullen please! Help me! Please! Cullen!_

“It's okay! Evelyn, it’s me. I have you!” Dorian soothed, crawling on the ground after her as she tried to scramble away, pushing his magic into her body to repair whatever was being done to her.

“MALEFICAR!” someone screamed.

Then the world went mad.

Men and women, elves, humans, dwarves and qunari started screaming, running away, running towards just _running_ , anxious to get away from the blood magic.

Dorian didn't hear, too focused on aiding Evelyn who was dying in his arms. Her eyes clouded, deep brown irises the color of the best Tevinter whiskeys were now shaded in red, weeping bloody tears. She choked as he held her, coughing up bubbles of blood. She tried to speak, but she only mumbled one word over and over, broken up by her bloody coughs.

“Cu-, Cu-, len.”

“Sweet Maker, No. Stay with me, please.” The red welled in Dorian's eyes, his fear calmed him, knowing the emotion worked to save her. “You're okay amata, you're--”

A hand wrenched him away from her, tearing her bleeding body away from the only help.

“Void take you no! I'm helping her. She needs my--”

That mailed fist exploded against his jaw, breaking it. “Get your hands off her you Tevinter bastard!”

Another fist crashed in his face. A foot slammed against his back. “Mage filth!”

Metal rained upon him, boulders upset from a mountainside, burying him in steel and pain.

Taken from her only aid, Evelyn fell soundlessly into the ground as the people surged around her, trampling her. They screamed, wailed and panicked, unaware that was the _Herald of Andraste_ they just stepped on or over or around.

Raleigh, Cullen and Iron Bull arrived finally, pushing their way through the pandemonium to the carnage.

Evelyn and Dorian.

Still.

In pools of their own blood.

“The Inquisitor is dead!” Someone shouted from the crowd.

"Amata Liberata! Mortus!"

Cullen and Iron Bull moved with single desperate purpose while Raleigh snapped and snarled barking back anyone who would stray too close.

 She was dead, it was all he heard. Evelyn, music of his life, was dead. He knelt at her body, moved his lips to speak but the air stuck in his chest, breath arrested and stopped like his heart. He could make no sound.

Bull’s vision narrowed to a single point of bloody focus. Dorian. In the dirt. 

“Kadan!” The templars continued their assault, kicking an already inert and bloodied mage. 

“Step back! He’s under suspicion of—“

No qunari was ever weaponless and though his axe lay forgotten on the other side of the courtyard, Bull lowered his head and rammed with all fury and madness one of his horns into the closest templar’s chest. The man, in full armor, lifted clear off the ground and flew back, landing in the dirt yards away.

Hands curled into claws lunged for the next templar, fingers closing around her neck, squeezing her windpipe shut, her eyes bulging in her head. The templar strangled and kicked weakly at her attacker, no use against The Iron Bull’s seething fury.

“Let…let go!”

He flung her aside as well.

He rounded on the third, another woman who knelt, hands raised in the common gesture of surrender. His urgency spared her pain.

Obstacles removed, Bull reached for Dorian who lay still and unresponsive, lifting him up and out of the dirt and away from the danger.

“I got you. I got you.”

Evelyn and Dorian hung limp in their lovers' arms, dead to all who could see them. The panicked crowed parted and Cassandra appeared with Rylen and a contingent of guards, the commotion stirring her from her books.

“Get them inside the keep, take them to the Inquisitor's quarters, I will have guards posted at every door.”

As they fled, Cassandra appraised the situation. Twin pools of blood dried in the summer sun yet only one was claimed.

Two women and a man stood in templar armor looking proud and frightened, and half-dead from the Iron Bull’s assault.

“What have you done?” Cassandra drew her weapon, ready to attack.

“Peace Seeker. We saw the Tevinter attack the Inquisitor. We did what we were born to do.” The taller woman spoke. Her templar armor gleamed in the daylight sun, the sash around her waist hanging with a red tassel denoting rank. A Knight Captain. The two templars who flanked her dressed in lesser armor. The man a simple knight and the woman an initiate, waist bare of the red sash that denoted full knightship.

The Knight Captain's Fade green eyes gleamed when she said it, proud. “We killed the blood mage.”


	10. Blood and Magic pt. 2

They took the steps up to her quarters three at a time. Raleigh burst the door open, urging them through with a wave, then slammed it shut behind them and stood by, ready to challenge—wooden sword and all, any assassin who followed behind. But before the door could latch close a dwarven foot kicked it in.

“Nobody gets by damn--”

An armed crossbow pushed through the opening, bolt cocked and aimed for Samson’s face, Varric pushing through behind it. Along with Sera, Josephine, Rainier, Krem, Cole, and Leliana with Senior Enchanter Fiona following close behind. Evelyn's friends and comrades jostled and pushed their way into the room, strangely quiet for all the commotion going on below.

Iron Bull placed Dorian on one of the chaises, his voice broken, switching between common and qunlat. Dorian's face was one large dark bruise. His jaw didn't close right, and his nose was assuredly broken in at least two places. His clothing, all belts and straps and buckles, concealed other damages,  fractured ribs and several bruised organs.

But he breathed. Gasping and shallow, Iron Bull watched his chest rise and fall and thanked all the gods he knew and didn't for each shaky breath.

“Kadan...” He took at tender hand to cup the less bruised half of his face, his thumb sliding down the bridge of Dorian's nose. What used to be one smooth draw now caught on juts of displaced bone. Iron Bull choked, tears running away from him.

“Chief, I'm so sorry.” Krem breathed. As much as he didn’t like the ‘vint, this was nothing Dorian deserved.

Meanwhile Cullen laid Evelyn in her bed, the pillows starting to dot and well with dribbles of her blood.

“Evelyn can you hear me?”

She groaned as he touched her, moving as best as her battered body could away from the agony of his touch.

“Pa- Pa –op. Cu- Cu- len.” She called, clear tears replacing the bloody ones.

“I'm right here, my love. I'm here, your safe.”

Senior Enchanter Fiona stood between the two bodies, faced with the impossible decision of who to attend to first. Judging from first glances, Dorian suffered a brutal beating but would be easiest and quickest to stabilize.

However the Inquisitor was just far too important.

“Someone get me Apprentice Nashir, he will assist me.” Fiona focused on Dorian first, that way the Inquisitor could demand her full and undivided attention. Her magic set his jaw and the bones in his fingers.

“He has been savaged but he will live. I expect him to rest, no magic, no nothing for at least two weeks.”

“You got it Doc.” Bull muttered, never taking his eyes off Dorian's.

They cracked open a sliver, Bull saw the red in them for a brief second before it faded.

Sera ran off to retrieve the other mage, opening the door to find Cassandra on the other side of it as well as a handful of the Inquisiton's best and most loyal soldiers. She stormed up as Sera stormed out.

“Do they live? Maker tell me they live.”

“Sparkler will be alright, but...” Varric inclined a head toward Evelyn and Cullen, her hand grasped between his, his lips moving in constant prayer.

“Commander.”

 _“You shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond._  
For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light  
And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.

_“Nothing that He has wrought shall be lost._

_“You shall not be lost._

_“You shall not be lost._

_“I will not lose you!_

“Commander!”

Cullen stiffened, startled out of his litany. “Whatever it is, it has to wait Cassandra.”

“I'm afraid it can't. The details are fuzzy but it seems our Inquisitor has been attacked by blood magic. Dorian's.”

A shocked murmur leveled the room, acute panic and disbelief running rampant.

Samson stepped forward and placed a hand on Cullen’s shoulder, a gesture meant for restraint disguised as comfort. But Samson didn't need to press to keep him in place, Cullen didn't move.

“That's bullshit and you know it Cassandra!” Iron Bull stood ready and willing to die right now for Dorian’s sake, preparing to defend the mage against a grief enraged templar, finding he didn't need to. Cullen clearly heard yet acted as though he did not, remaining at his prayers.

But he heard, oh he definitely heard, and he assuredly heard the abject howling in his ears that urged action, that begged him to enact justice.

As his lips moved in silent prayer he evaluated for a breath how much strength it would take to fling Samson aside, run through the Iron Bull and tear Dorian apart with his bare hands. His blood screamed, so high and loud and beautiful it felt like the catch of a memory lost, an old song heard after so long in silence. Every chord fueled by Evelyn’s blood choked moaning.

But his faith kept him still, kept the hissing quiet.

“Those two are thicker than fucking thieves. He'd never hurt her. Plus he's no fucking blood mage.” Iron Bull defended.

“The templars...they saw him.”

Cassandra balked realizing she revealed too much too soon. “I already have them locked in the dungeon they will answer--”

Bull moved, a bolt fired from a crossbow, too damn fast for a man his size. He was up and on his feet, halfway gone before a choked little whisper barely heard by anybody in the room brought him back.

“Amatus.”

And he came back, just like that. The rage still flamed within him, and he smiled to think of the ways he intended to break those templars’ bones. But that would wait, his kadan needed him right now.

“I'm here asshole. You can't scare me like that again do you hear me?”

“Sor-ro...”

Fiona was with her now, huffing, frustrated as she didn't seem to respond to any of the healing magic pumped within her.

“I can’t. I can’t. This is blood magic, beyond my capabilities to heal through, I can maybe… Oh Maker, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Fiona's magic sparked, curled back on her, repelled. Whatever magic was in her denied Fiona's healings. The reverb wrung another scream from Evelyn. Her back arched off the bed, the nightmares in her head brought too close to the surface.

Evelyn whimpered, each cry stabbing his brain and his heart and his stomach making it hard for him to remain upright. Deathly cold fear encased him, surrounded him, air felt heavy in his chest. Blood. Magic. And there was not a thing he could do to help.

"What should we do now?" Leliana asked observing their leader with a detached coldness befitting the Spymistress. "If she dies, we must keep that information for as long as we..."

"She won't die! Don't you dare say that!" Rainier challenged, stepping forward, he owed her too much for her to die like this.

"We must be pragmatic... The Inquisition..."

"Hang your pragmatism you crow!" He snarled spoiling possibly for a fight with the spymaster.

“Enough! All of you!” Cullen screamed.

Sera appeared, Apprentice Nashir behind her, hauling a trunk of potions.

The Inquisitor screamed from her bed snapping all eyes to her, silence falling after like a heavy boulder. "Don't...don't..." She struggled  against Fiona who tried again, laying cool hands wreathed in green light against her stomach. She fought even as fresh blood sprang like a fountain from her nose and mouth.

_She is beaten. Not one fist but many. And they are unfamiliar. But the pain is familiar. Pain here is an old friend. Her only friend._

"How is she...?  Commander! Keep her still." Fiona commanded. Cullen  did not want to keep her still. He wanted to pull her back into his arms and run. Out and away, far from Skyhold and anything else that would harm her. He wanted to run but his legs would not take him far.

 _'See what you are. See your weakness...'_ Voices, hissing and moaning, specters that had left him unbothered returned with a screaming vengeance.

Ignoring them and the pain that sproutedt behind his ears, he pressed a shaking hand to her chest.

"B, please. Lay still."

Ignoring the pain was hard, harder still when a room full of his most trusted friends began to devolve into chaos. She fought against even him, whimpering where he touched her.

Nashir looked bewildered. "I've cast every sleep spell on her I know!"

"No. No..." She cried, turning in her sheets to shy away from Nashir's hands.

"You! Stop!" Cullen yelled, steel in his voice. Too late though, under his touch she fell immediately into slumber, the hand that had been clutching his own going slack as though dead.

"She needs rest."

"She was afraid!" he hissed. Mages, curse them, inept and deadly every one. They hurt her. They hurt her!

"As are we all.” Fiona stood shaking her head. “I do not yet know if the immediate danger has passed. I do not know if she will live. Whatever has been done to her, my magic is having difficulty repairing. But Leliana is right, something must be done. And you, Commander, must be the one to do it."

Again all the eyes in the room snapped in unison, this time focusing on him.

“I...I can't...She needs me.”

“She needs us to make sure her Inquisition does not falter my friend.” Cassandra placed a hand on his weary shoulder. “She needs all of us for that task. And we cannot fail her.”

“Frightened, freezing, frozen in the dark. My family, my friends. They are here. I am safe.” Cole said, he drew covers up around her neck. “She's cold. May I watch her? I will make sure she stays warm. You must go. You have decisions to make.”

Cole's ice chipped eyes were wet, but the tears didn't fall. He was trying after all. It was hard to feel the pain of his friends. Such violent and senseless hurting. But he could still help.

Cullen assessed every mage in the room; Nashir, Fiona, Dorian with suspect eyes before he shook his head, suppressing the moans calling for their murder.

Retribution must wait.

He was loathe to let her hand go, Oh Maker, letting her go hurt worse than the pain tumbling around like thunder in his head.

Cullen rose from her bed and addressed them. "Rainier, Krem. Cassandra. Take the soldiers and close every gate in Skyhold. No one gets in or out. Our enemies cannot know what has happened."

Grateful to have something to do besides watch helplessly, all three departed quickly for the gates.

"Josephine, can we trust your agents?"

"Yes, of course." She dabbed her eyes and summoned her sternest face.

"Good, have them monitor the rumors that will undoubtedly arise and counteract them with our own. Tell them simply the Inquisitor was wounded badly and must remain in Skyhold to rest for a while."

"That will work on the outside," Leliana started. "But hundreds of people here saw what happened. There are probably right now a million rumors ..."

"We cannot address that right now, what is important is that our enemies do not know our weakness." The Commander pressed his lips into a thin line. "And that they,” He pointed to Evelyn and Dorian. “Are protected at all times."

“I can assign mages...” Fiona started.

“No,” Cullen replied too quickly, almost on reflex. “Thank you Enchanter but no. Until we know who has done this, since we know it is blood magic...”

Five years ago, his answer would have been simple. Three Years ago, his answer would have been simple. He remembered his training. He remembered _what used to be done_.

“Since we know a blood mage has done this, I cannot take the risk more will try to finish what was started. I don’t…” he licked his lips. “I don’t believe Dorian did this. I trust you to assist in finding who has.”

Fiona and Nashir relaxed. They too remembered how things were once done.

“Psh, you want mages to help find one of their own?” Sera started. “In the Jennies we got a rule, you never snitch on a mate no matter what. We got a belly full of mages and anyone a’ them coulda done this. We supposed to trust them to turn over one a’ their kin? I say we lock ‘em up and sort ‘em out that way.”

Fiona, Nashir, Cassandra and the rest turned to Cullen. So did Raleigh.

Cullen spoke, the words shocking him even as he said them.

“No. Let them continue on as normal with the construction of the Circle."

A shocked murmur of outrage raced through the companions.

"Surely you can't mean..."

"I think you meant, kick them the shit out!"

"What the fuck!"

"If anyone has a better idea, Maker please speak up." Cullen shouted silencing them. "But as it stands, our Inquisitor was attacked by blood magic. We have no smoking staff to point to. Exiling the mages means we undo everything she’s done. She swore to protect them, I will uphold that promise. Furthermore, locking them all in the dungeons mean we could potentially have another Kirkwall on our hands, not to mention our lack of space. The keep is already quarantined, no one is to leave. Let the people see that it is business as usual and the panic will calm. Senior Enchanter Fiona, her staff, and ours will work together to get to the bottom of this."

Sera scoffed while Cassandra and Raleigh stood by with an odd look on their faces, some mix between pride and amusement.

"See it done." He commanded officially ending the meeting.

**

Iron Bull, Cole, and Varric lingered. Cullen placed a kiss on Evelyn’s forehead promising in a murmured whisper to return soon. He crossed the room to where Iron Bull sat, his face buried in one large hand, the other on Dorian’s chest, over his heart, the steady thump soothing the rage within him.

“How is he?”

“In and out, he keeps calling for the Boss and his eyes keep changing from red to white back to red again. Other Boss, I don’t for a second believe Dorian would hurt Evelyn.”

Cullen paused too long before answering. “Nor do I.”

“Other Boss. Don’t think for a second I’ve forgotten about the templars Cassandra locked up. The minute he’s up, I’m going to pay them a personal visit. Now, I know you got stuff to see to. Don’t worry about the Boss. Varric, the kid, and I will see to her, to them both.”

Iron Bull kissed Dorian, his suffering lightened when Dorian leaned into the caress of his lips. Bull muttered something in qunlat, Cullen had no command of the language but the tone was unmistakably tender.

**

It started with whispers as it always did. Vile hissing, treacherous moaning punctuated by blows to the brain that throbbed with every step.

Breathe.

Hold.

Release.

Breathe.

Hold.

Choke.

Blood.

Die.

Another bolt of pain lanced him in the heart. Evelyn could very well be dying.

_Dying._

And as much as he wanted to burn in the agonizing rage that thought summoned, he felt nothing but hollow and void-filled, animated only by inertia. The great greased wheel of the Inquisition churning on and carrying him away from the only thing that mattered. There was a gap of space between the Inquisitor’s chamber doors and the rest of the keep, an empty walkway.

“Maker,” He prayed, falling to his knees, pressing his forehead into the stones inches away from the threshold between man and Commander.  “If you ever loved your servant. Spare her. And if a life must be paid, take mine.”

He crossed the threshold, man morphed into Commander but the change remained incomplete.

**

Krem, Rainier, and Bull’s Chargers stood imposingly in front of the main gate while a crowd of people grew around them.

"I told you, nobody leaves, return to your quarters!" Rainier shouted.

"Did you hear? There is blood magic here! Soon all the mages will turn into abominations and tear us apart. We must get out of here."

"You people worry too damn much, that ain't gonna happen." Krem shouted back.

"Did you see what that thing did to the Inquisitor! The Inquisitor! We stand no chance!"

Agitated shouts ripped through the crowd slowly morphing it into an angry mob.

"What in the Void is going on here!" Cullen shouted, pushing his way through to the front of the crowd.

"Templar ser!" A man pleaded. "You cannot allow us to remain here among abominations."

"I am _not_ a templar and there are no abominations here." Cullen said as though the man were suggesting that Andraste was a chicken and not expressing a very real and valid concern.

"But what of the Inquisitor? Is she dead?" Someone else shouted from the back. A murmur of assent passed through the crowd.

"She's dead! They are trying to hide it so we won't spread the news."

"That is the Inquisitor's lover, if he says she's not dead. I believe him!'

"Quiet! All of you!" the lion roared. The rest took notice and silenced. Lying would serve no purpose here and when the truth came out because it inevitably did, it would wound their position rather than maintain it. However, telling the blind truth would cause greater panic.

"There was an attempt made on the Inquisitor's life. The assassin has not succeeded but we cannot let you leave until we have rooted them out. And those who desire to leave so soon in the face of such rank accusations only cast the specter of doubt upon themselves."

The subterfuge had the desired effect, many began to protest loudly that they'd never hurt Andraste's Blessed.

"Now return to your quarters and your work. In time, all of you will be interviewed so we can get to the heart of this matter!"

Grumbling though satisfied, the lingering crowd dispersed.

"That was impressive Commander." Cassandra complimented. "And here I thought Leliana was the shrewd one.”

Cullen remained silent, the battle of voices in his head resurgent.

"How are they, Dorian and Evelyn?"

"Awful"

"Blood magic," Cassandra shook her head, pressing two fingers to her temples. “In our very midst. Is it wicked of me to believe that it was a matter of time?”

"Keep your blasted voice down. The people can't know it was actually blood magic, they'd slaughter every mage here."

“Cullen,” the Seeker turned to the Templar placing hands on his shoulders. “Evelyn is no mage. She does not know the dangers of blood magic and abominations the way we do.”

“Why are you telling me this, I know!”

“Right. And she trusts us to act on her behalf when she cannot.”

Cullen pulled away from Cassandra’s grasp, “What are you saying?”

“I am saying your commitment to her ideal is honorable. But we must remain practical. We cannot afford to be lax, lives are at stake. Cullen, there was a reason Templars were trained to do the things you do. Trained in how to handle threats of blood magic and abominations. It is unwise to forget what that kind of magic is capable of and what those kinds of people can do.”

Now Cullen wrenched himself away from her, violently, visions of blood hiding in  the corners of his eyes. Stone walls spattered with it, corpses heaped in corners. Screaming, brothers and sisters screaming.

“I have never forgotten.” The words passed through a filter of grit teeth.

“I…I am sorry. It is difficult for me to say this. Evelyn wants to live in a world where mages and templars and people live with no barriers between them. I would see the world change as well. But sometimes…Cullen remember the Herald must be protected.”

“She protects herself!”

“And look how far it’s taken her! She lies, possibly dying, because she trusted too much!”

“And what would you have me do? Start beating on mages like those templars did?! Like they did to Dorian! Keep pounding at them until one gives us what we need? That’s what Meredith did! And look how far _that_ took _her_! I am not Meredith. I will not break at the first sign of pressure!”

“No Cullen, you are not Meredith. Do not insult me as I never suggested you were. I merely advise greater caution. As time wears on, if the blood mage eludes capture, if someone attempts to finish what they started, will you be able to choose between her ideals and her life?”

Cullen pushed passed Cassandra, leaving her question hanging in the air, swinging back and forth in his head like a body from a hangman’s noose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can always reach me at mirabai0821.tumblr.com


	11. Blood and Magic Pt. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh fuck it.

"'The templar slid his hands up her creamy thighs...'” Varric stopped, placing the book face down in his lap, writer’s mind jarred by the passage. Evelyn lay sleeping fitfully, Cole’s pale cool hand pressed against her forehead. Behind him, Iron Bull still sat with Dorian, thumb stroking tenderly down the reset bridge of his nose. “You know, it’s always ‘creamy’ thighs or ‘pale’ thighs or ‘porcelain’ thighs and lookin’ at you all why can’t they be ‘slate’ thighs or ‘sepia’ thighs or,” Varric looked down at his friend trying to find a suitable description for her color. “Dark copper? Hm, this is an oversight. I gotta get ahold of my editor.”

She lay in her bed, lovingly smothered in thick blankets by Cole’s hand, motionless and unheeding but the author thought he saw, or imagined for his own comfort, the beginnings of a smile quirking on her lips.

"What in the Void are you doing?" Cullen stalked up the stairs, a few bells after sunset. He spoke again with Josephine about monitoring the news of the Inquisitor's 'injuries' while coordinating with Fiona and Nashir about interviewing the mages. He swallowed a gulp of water, and ate half a roll before returning to Evelyn's room to take up watch for the night.

"I'm reading to her."

Cullen curiously reached for the book in Varric’s lap. " _Daggers and Danger: A Love Story_? She reads this nonsense?"

"Well yeah,” Varric replied, as though the answer were obvious. “I've found several well-travelled and dog eared passages. I think her favorite’s on page 240."

 _'But Ser Templar' the rogue woman protested, bending over lasciviously to show off her assets._ Cullen snapped the book shut with a hasty thud and threw it across the room as though poisoned.

Varric laughed, rich warm tones keeping the painful and oppressive silence at bay.

"Any changes?" Cullen asked.

"Fiona stopped in to check on them, Dorian’s improving but Viney’s still very weak and the Senior Enchanter’s magic doesn’t seem to be helping much. Cole’s been keeping an eye on her dreams haven’t you, kid?"

“Whirling, swirling, reeling, a rock upsetting the river. The memories jumble, mixing, she can’t tell hers from hers.” Cole chanted.

"How is it out there?"

"Under control for now."

"'For now' the operating phrase there.” Varric hopped down from his chair perched next to the Inquisitor’s bed. “Hey Curly. A word please.”

“Make it quick.” Cullen sighed, displeased.

“You know, I think I hardly know you.”

“Did you ever really know me before?” Cullen answered back harshly. Varric raised his hands in surrender. “Easy there, I don’t mean anything by it. What I mean is, I knew of you. I ran into you more than once during our stay in Kirkwall charming as it was.”

“Get to the point.”

“My point is from what I knew of you, seems like your time here has done you a lot of good.”

Cullen shifted nervously. Varric didn’t know the thoughts in his head.

“Don’t. I am not a good…I am not as good as you would believe me to be.”

“Seems like you’re workin' on old information. You have come a long way since Kirkwall. And I only need to know of you to know that.”

Cullen heaved a sigh, turning his gaze up to the ceiling in a moment of silent appeal to his Maker. _Forgive me_.

“In Kirkwall, I was following orders.  I thought that what I was doing was right. But I knew it wasn’t. Maker help me, I knew it wasn’t right. But I was afraid. I’d seen too much of what magic could do, I hid behind that fear and Meredith’s orders, thinking I was protecting. That it was for the greater good. It wasn’t. If I had realized sooner maybe Kirkwall could have been saved. I have to live with that.”

“You did what you were supposed to do when you were supposed to do it. You stood with us when it counted. You stand with us now.”

“And yet it still seems no matter what I do, from Kinloch, to Kirkwall, to now, those I love more than…they get hurt.”

Varric balled a fist and rapped against the Commander’s breastplate. “I had this conversation with Hawke too you know. Right after her mother died. She blamed herself for it. For Bethany and for Carver. And I told her that to think you can control everything that happens to everyone around you is crazy talk. You can’t, and you'll drive yourself mad thinkin' you can. All you _can_ do is your best. You love that girl and it brings out the very _best_ in you. Trust that if nothing else.”

Cullen crossed his arms, uncomfortable with Varric's direction of conversation. He deflected, steering it away from Evelyn. “How is Hawke by the way?”

“Very pregnant, ready to pop any day now. I’m expecting a bird.” Varric coughed when Cullen fixed him with an exasperated but almost amused look. “I mean a raven bearing news. Not an actual...how would a wolf/bird work anyway? Forget it. But man I wish I was there. Can you imagine? Hawke _pregnant_?”

He couldn’t. But he imagined someone else. Plain and ordinary, beautiful. An earthen colored hand resting on a swollen belly, cursing foully when a kick landed just a bit too hard.

_Come calm the little one down, straw head. Baby only rests when daddy sings._

He shook the vision from his head, heart swelling painfully against the thorns wrapped around it. Cullen rubbed the back of his neck. "Thank you for watching her. I will take over."

“Alright Curly. Don’t push yourself too hard. C’mon kid, let’s give ‘em some peace.”

**

“Is he improving at least?” Cullen called from across the room.

“In and out,” Iron Bull answered gruffly.

“Are you hungry Bull? You’ve been up here all day, I can have food brought.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Cullen had food brought anyway and smiled when the smell of the open tray was enough to pull the Iron Bull away from his vigil to wolf down a bowl of stew then begrudgingly go back for seconds.

“You don’t have to feel guilty about eating Iron Bull. He’s not going to fly away.”

“He almost did Cullen. I’m losing him. He’s slippin through my fingers like all the expensive silk he wears. It’s been going on for months now and I trusted…I shoulda pushed harder.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lately Dorian’s been keepin’ to himself, holed up in the library or off somewhere doing something all hours of the night. He wouldn’t tell me when I asked, so I let it go, figured I’d trust him to tell me. Figured if something was really wrong I’d sense it or he’d let me know what’s up. Then this happens.”

Iron Bull punched his thigh, an act of self-castigation rather than frustration.

“I shoulda…If I had. This would not have happened.”

“Iron Bull, could he have…?”

“No, not for a fucking second so don’t even say that in my hearing. He’d never use blood magic. It goes against everything he’s tryna be. ‘The Good Tevinter’, good Tevinters don’t blood magic. So, if it was him, and I ain’t sayin’ it is, someone’s got their fingers on his strings. And when I find them, I’m going to rip them apart piece by piece and that ain’t bluster, that’s a fucking promise.”

“Then promise me you’ll let me have a piece.”

“My word is my bond Other Boss.”

Evelyn’s bed was large enough to fit four comfortably and six in a pinch. Yet rather than try to stuff the four of them in a bed together:

“Bull, you’re my friend but.”

“Yeah, we ain’t that friendly.”

They opted to let Dorian rest in the bed with Evelyn while the other two men took up night watch from the couch.

Exhaustion though, overwhelmed them, and they fell asleep over a chessboard, talking to each other to prevent that very thing from happening.

“Knight to E4.” Iron Bull, too tired to move, dictated his maneuver instead.

“Queen takes Knight. Checkmate.” The Commander countered.

“You sonofab—“

**

Fiona and Nashir visited in the morning, and while Evelyn hadn’t improved, Dorian had. Sera and Josephine took up the day’s vigil while Cullen read the overnight reports with Knight-Captain Rylen.

“Commander, there are troubles stirring. Last night mages attacked a group of templars. Cassandra had them all thrown in the dungeons where they were questioned.”

“And?”

“No specific impetus, just a fight. Tensions are high after what happened and there were three other fights just like it. Our dungeons will fill quickly unless we do something about this. A vocal sect of mages are still unhappy about Circle Skyhold. While the templars and some of the civilians are calling for all the mages to be expelled given the blood magic attack on the Inquisitor.”

“They know it’s blood magic?”

“That kind of secret we were never going to be able to keep for long. But yes, they know. Furthermore, those templars who almost beat Ser Pavus to death are demanding they be released, convinced they've done no wrong.”

“Let them sit in that dungeon and rot.”

“As you say Commander.”

“Rylen.”

“Yes Commander?”

“You were at Kirkwall.”

“Aye. Same as you.”

“Should we worry?”

“Not yet. But if we don’t find the culprit, we’ll have to.”

**

“But what are you doing to ensure our protection Commander?” Baron Flisse had pinched face, red and ruddy. Too much wine and not enough constitution. Leliana and Cassandra were not able to assuage his fears themselves, the noble and a few of his Nevarran comrades insisting on a private audience with the man in charge.

Him.

“Guards have been doubled. Martial law declared. All are to be in their quarters at nightfall.”

“No no, I mean _my_ protection specifically. As you know, I am a very important guest of the Inquisition. I believe the Inquisitor herself was considering my offer for her hand when this unfortunate business happened...”

In his head, Baron Flisse took a long walk off a short cliff, rolling down a rocky slope hitting every sharp stone along the way. He let the man drone though, unwise to offend him, he and his friends were some of the last petty lordlings willing to aid the Inquisition with their financial troubles. Not enough, according to Josephine—as Baron Flisse barely had the coin to keep his own lands his, but even poor friends were welcome in poor times.

Cullen made vague promises of putting a detail of guards at his door and that _yes_ he would express his well wishes to the Inquisitor but _NO_ he could not arrange a visit to her quarters.

Leaving the Baron, he tasked Rainier with drilling the combative prisoners until they were too tired and too sore to have an opinion anymore, and he instructed Leliana to keep him informed of any rumors that might have leaked from Skyhold.

He found Samson toiling in the dirt, sweating through his tunic, working twice as hard as any other builder around him.

“I’ve brought your dose for the day.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Samson…” Cullen warned.

“Look, this keeps me focused enough, hands barely shake, see?” Samson lifted his hand as proof. There was a tremor there but Cullen recognized that it was under control. He tucked the bottle back into his pocket, feeling his own thirst surge at knowing the lyrium would go to waste.

“How’s the Lady Herald?”

Cullen answered with silence.

“More a’ the same, then. I’m still not sure how I feel about either of you, prisoner in a fancy cage as I am. But you and I both know blood magic is nasty business and no one should have to watch a loved one suffer like that. The Order was fucked  in a lot a ways, but on this issue we agreed. Suffer not those bastards.”

Circle Skyhold, thank Blessed Andraste, was nothing like Kinloch Hold or the Gallows. Where those towers had been cramped and sectioned, walled off and bricked up like a wine cellar for souls, this place was open. High ceilings, wooden floors, with as much glass to let the light in as there were stones to build the walls. The place had the feeling of a well-cared for home rather than a prison. With Cassandra as his second, he met Fiona and Nashir with a group of other senior mages.

“Has the templar dog come to annul us before the mortar’s dry?” An elven woman asked.

“Satsuma enough!” Fiona corrected. “Commander Rutherford has done nothing to warrant that kind of disrespect. Speak like that again and see yourself removed. We are allies now, and I know that rankles most of us, but there will never be peace unless we learn to work together. So hold your tongue unless it advances the conversation!”

Cassandra smiled and Cullen felt himself relax a little as he started the meeting.

“What I have to say is difficult, but it must be done. We are to conduct an investigation of all the mages at Skyhold for potential blood magic or possession.”

A tense murmur rippled through the mages before a Vashoth, Herah Adaar, spoke up.

“How do you intend to conduct this investigation?”

Satsuma bubbled next to her, but a withering look from both Fiona and Herah stopped her outburst.

“These kinds of investigations were never conducted ideally in the past.” Cullen gave a conciliatory look towards Satsuma who still glared but with less intensity. “We intend to correct that. The mages will be generally interview by a panel consisting of Seeker Pentaghast, Senior Enchanter Fiona, and myself.

“The three branches of the tree meeting at the trunk, how quaint.” Spoke a male elf.

Cullen sighed deeply. “Listen, if I may be frank. If you have a better idea, let me hear it, the point is, Evel—the Inquisitor was almost murdered right in front of all our eyes by one of our own.”

The headache he’d been fighting pulsed and tingled, a dull insistent throb, reminding him that it was always there.

That it would always be there.

He rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke, trying his best to assuage the mages that past abuses would never be repeated here and that this investigation would be conducted under the purview of all involved.

It helped for the most part, due largely to Fiona’s presence on the panel.

“We will begin  tomorrow, are there any questions?”

When none were asked, the meeting adjourned.

**

“You did well Commander, we can make a diplomat out of you yet.”

“Just don’t ask me to start wearing hose and host salons.”

“Not yet anyway.” Cassandra smirked. “See to the Inquisitor. I know she must be on your mind.” His friend bid him good day.

His headache raged now, unable to be kept at bay with his usual mental or breathing exercises. The meeting lasted far too long and the whispers only grew louder with each passing hour, calling for him to take a torch from its sconce and set the whole building on fire, locking the door behind him on the way out.

 _They deserve a burning death for her suffering._ They counselled.

Cullen hummed a tune to drown out the noise. When Evelyn spoke, he heard nothing but her voice. So beautiful, so loud, her ringing laughter alone was enough to quell the hissing and echoing silence that whispered violent things.

He heard them every day, every day. Something Samson had a hard time understanding and accepting, something that made him struggle with the treatments. That he could be free of lyrium for years and still, daily, hear his empty chains rattling in his head and in his body calling for him back.

“Is it even fucking worth it then?” Samson had asked him one night, the two men kept up by mutual nightmares.

“Yes.” Cullen nodded, assured.

“And for someone like me who ain’t got the lips of Thedas’ hardest right hook wrapped around my cock?”

“Samson!” Cullen groaned. “Could you please just not with that? Call her Lady Herald, or Evelyn, or Inquisitor, Lady Trevelyan, just something that's not so damn vulgar!”

“Eh, worth it to see your face.”

Cullen trudged up the steps to the Inquisitor’s chambers, wondering to himself yet again was any of this worth it? Why suffer then, if it wasn’t? Why diminish himself? Especially now? What good was he? What use? If the blood mage attacked again, he’d be worthless, a blunted sword. Able to only watch as she was taken, murdered or worse.

The ringing in his head promised no sleep. But if he could have a sip, drag his tongue around the edge of a philter, or maybe just crack one open for the smell, maybe just the _smell_ might ease him to sleep tonight. He hadn’t rested well in the 36 hours since her attack, running on the dregs of energy spent long ago.

Sera was playing in Evelyn’s hair, tying the vines in ribbons or braiding them up into larger, fatter plaits that, when undone, left them in a soft curl.

“Figured Quizzie would still wanna look her best even laid up like this.” Sera said answering Cullen’s slightly confused face. “She been sleepin’ all day.”

“She had some nightmares.” Josie corrected.

“Ah shits, you weren’t sapposed ta’ say. He got enough to worry about without him havin’ the mental picture of her screaming his name.”

“Sera! I wasn’t going to reveal all of that.”

“Maker,” Cullen crossed the room and pressed a hand to Evelyn’s forehead. “I’m here sweetling, you’re safe.”

“She’s been quiet for an hour now. Master Nashir came by for a checkup, Dorian continues to improve and he should be waking soon.”

Dorian lay in the Inquisitor’s bed where they left him, looking more like a man at simple rest than someone comatose. Iron Bull sat right by his side, honing his axe ominously.

“Thank you ladies,” Cullen nodded wearily, shucking off his cloak, his armor, and the padded tunic underneath. Josie and Sera took their leave and Cullen summoned dinner again, more for Iron Bull than for himself.

“Was she that bad Bull?”

The qunari turned a bloodshot eye to the Commander and gave a single nod.

“Damnit! Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“What would you have done, sit there and watch? What can either of us do but watch?”

“I could have been here. She needed me.”

“She’s probably glad you weren’t.”

Cullen climbed into the bed, pulling Evelyn into his arms, resting her head against his chest while the steady scrape of whetstone against axe filled the silence between the two men.

“Those templars?”

“Rotting, I intend to let them stew a bit. I have mage interviews tomorrow.”

“Got any suspicions?”

Cullen remembered Satsuma from the meeting. “Perhaps.”


	12. Blood and Magic pt. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Graphic Violence and hints of dub-con if you're paying attention

“State your name please.”

Herah Adaar

Mazoku Satsuma

Nahsir Prasada

Albert Nottingham

Jasmine Smith

Olenka Constantin

Athima

Cullen, Cassandra, and Fiona started their interviews with the senior mages, those that had been with the Inquisition the longest.

“And the ones with the most motive.” Cullen grumbled to Cassandra as Satsuma walked in.

They asked basic questions, where they were from, their specialty of magic, did they fight in the conflict and on what side. They asked about their history within the Circle and whether or not they had come into contact with blood magic in the past. They asked about their feelings on Circle Skyhold and the Inquisitor’s plan to foster more amicable relationships between mages and templars.

Most were neutral on the idea, seeing its merits and its drawbacks, and only very few were ardently for or against it. Satsuma was in the later of these extreme opinions.

“She made a promise she went back on.” Satsuma complained when asked.

“But you’ve no reason to doubt—“ Cassandra started.

“I have every reason to doubt. It is the same collar but a different master! I swore to never allow myself to be yoked again when my Circle fell. They must all be eliminated!”

“So much so that an attack on the Inquisitor is warranted? Justified? You have the option to leave.” Fiona asked. Satsuma wavered, knowing her fierce opinion cast her in a bad light.

“And go where? Do what? Have some farmer skewer me with a pitchfork in my sleep? I am not happy with her choices. Yet I’d never do her harm. At least not through blood magic.”

 _Those she champions would stab her in the back!_ He heard and his own voice hissed in concert.

“So you admit to wanting to harm her?”

“No! Do not put words in my mouth templar!” she spat. “I wish for her recovery, and I hope she is in better senses when she wakes.”

_If she wakes._

The end of the days’ interviews proved inconclusive. Cassandra could point to no clear suspects nor could Fiona. Cullen kept his suspicion pinned on Satsuma, trying to convince the other two women of her motive.

“No Commander. I know Satsuma. Her motive is clear but she can barely heat water with a fireball let alone orchestrate an attack of blood magic. She’s not the one you want.”

His headache was days strong now with no sign of relief. He paced battlements humming furiously to himself, anything to knock out or knock back the whispers.

Prayer helped sometimes, The Maker and His Bride quieting his mind long enough for him to find some measure of peace. He preferred to pray alone when he sought succor from the howling and the hissing, letting his voice sing on the far side of shouting, the noise he made louder than the noise in his head.

The chapel was occupied tonight, though. Two women, alike in their posture but so different in their history. An elf, one dressed in clothing a bit better than the rags she came to Skyhold in, and a mage, dressed in odd yet somber robes, a veil draped across her body wrapping over her head. Both women knelt, both prayed. One in common, the other in a language that sounded to his ears as Tevene.

There were offerings heaped at the Lady's feet as well as ashes of burnt parchment, prayers written on them and burned, the smoke sending the messages directly to the Lady's ears. His heart warmed to see the outpouring from the people, not everyone was her enemy as the voices tried to remind him. There were people in this keep that loved her as he did. That would protect her and who would never harm her.

He knelt away from the two women, choosing to whisper his chants rather than sing them.

_Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,_   
_I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm._   
_I shall endure._   
_What you have created, no one can tear asunder._

He felt a tug at his surcoat. The elven woman, the one snatched from the hands of the man she called Dominus. She had a bouquet of flowers in her hand, no better than weeds and half wilted from summer’s glare. She struggled to speak, and Cullen could tell she had no command of the common tongue. He rose from his knees to hear her.

To the side, the mage woman lifted her head from her prayers to watch.

“Amata Liberata,” That name came easy enough, spoken with a reverent care he recognized sometimes in his own voice. “She…sanus…he-healthy?”

Cullen started to nod in understanding but quickly shook his head to answer her question.

“No.”

The woman, Seraphina he remembered, seemed to recognize this word and her ears drooped in sadness.

“Please,” she said that word easily too. Cullen didn’t want to guess why. She pushed to him the flowers an entreating look on her face.

“I will see that she gets these, they will speed her recovery.”

Seraphina shook her head. “Intellego not.”

Cullen just smiled and squeeze her hand. “Thank. You.” He said slowly and the woman’s face lit up in recognition.

“Ser.” Seraphina pointed to herself then spread her arms to indicate the greater whole she was a part of. “Magi, …hurters…hurt the hurters.”

Cullen nodded, needing no course in Tevene to understand that plea.

The praying mage was gone.

**

_She was a flower starved of rain or light and he was the sky. Blue eyed and brown haired, sweets in his smile and softness in his hands._

_She knew him. Given the privilege of their birth, they knew each other well. Childhood friends turned to young adulthood lovers. No bard could sing a song any better._

_But bards lie._

_Oh do they lie._

_He was hasty, he pawed at her, she wanted this. She wanted this. He cooed to her, called her sweet things. Literally sweet things. She was his candy and she was glad to be anything to anybody. She loved him, he reminded her, she said the words. She wanted this. She agreed. She wanted this. He bit hard. It hurt._

_She wanted this?_

  
**

Dorian woke with a startled jump, visions of injured loved ones fading with each steadying breath. He blinked a few times, coming to the understanding that this was not his room and the body next to him was not the Iron Bull.

“Well,” he muttered, jaw still painfully sore. “While I can’t say this is the first time I’ve woken in a strange bed with no recollection of the night before, I can say this is the first time a woman’s been the bedmate. However, given the company I can’t really say I mind.”

“Kadan?”

Iron Bull shifted on the chair upsetting the axe that rested in his lap to the floor.

“Ah amatus, are you alright?”

Dorian smiled, the stretched skin splitting open his busted lip, causing the wound to bleed just the barest bit. Beaten, almost killed, and his first instinct is to smile upon waking. Possessed of a fierce need to grab and clutch and hold, Iron Bull crushed Dorian to him, unheeding of the man’s protests.

“I’m pretty sure you’re upsetting all the work the poor healers have done to keep those ribs intact amatus.”

“Then they can do it again, don’t care.”

“Yes well, I do. Let me go you lummox.”

“No. Never. Not. Ever. Deal.”

He felt Dorian smile into his chest as he dug his nose deeper, nuzzling closer, giving into the need to be held and to hold back. “I’m alright Bull, takes more than a few love taps from some puffed up templars to undo me.”

Cullen finished his prayers long after set sun, the keep quiet and firmly in the grip of martial law. Even the Herald’s Rest sat shuttered and silent, all patrons required to be in their rooms on pain of imprisonment. The members of the Inner Circle were not immune to these laws, and only guards walked the keep at dark.

He mounted the steps in her chambers to see Dorian and Iron Bull in an embrace, looking toward the bed, hoping to see the good fortune duplicated. Evelyn slumbered on, tears drying on her face from a lost nightmare.

“Commander! What has happened? How is she?”  Dorian asked.

“She was attacked by a blood mage, most believing it's you. She's not getting any better, and Senior Enchanter Fiona can’t seem to heal the damage done.”

Dorian scowled, anger fringing his voice. “I did not do this. Has she been attended by anyone else?”

“No, no one seems to have the skill to figure out what’s wrong.” Only now had Cullen ever allowed himself to express the grim truth. “She'll die without help.”

“No she will not.” This wasn’t ideal, but this was what Anh Bao taught him to do. To heal. He would show them and save her. “I can help.”

“Dorian, you just woke, you still require rest—“ Bull started but Dorian raised a hand to cut him off.

“I was trying to save her when this happened,” he gestured to his swollen face. “Let me finish what I started.”

“Senior Enchanter Fiona…”

“Doesn’t know what I know. Now stop being mother hens you two and let me work.”

Dorian shuffled on the bed to take Evelyn up into his arms. It made him sick the way she limply flopped, all her strength and joy turned drained from her..

“Dorian, your mana.”

“Don't worry about it.” Dorian said as the two men watched his eyes fill with red.

“Come on Sorora.” Dorian coaxed, feeling his magic pulse with the beat of his heart. He called her ‘sister’ knowing no strength or weakness of blood ties would ever replace her in his heart as such. She was his best and only friend, beloved second only to the Iron Bull. He would give up his secret for her life, he would give up his life for her life.

“Wake up amata. Time to get up, lazy bones.”

Red sparking tendrils of magic traced up the veins in Dorian’s hands, thrumming and pulsing, the sound audible to all in the room. Cullen’s stomach lurched, templar abilities weakened, but still attuned to blood magic’s sickening aura. The sourness, the ice chill in his guts evoked the same feeling of Uldred, of abominations in the Gallows. He felt the same sickness, the same creeping dread, the same claws of the same demons reaching to tear at his flesh and tear Evelyn away from him.

The voices burst through the dam of his control, pushing toward the forefront of his mind, flooding his brain with images thought suppressed. Exquisite pain broke across his head and face like glass burst against his skull, he felt the fragments stab him in the eyes and at the temples. He shouted and moved on impulse to pull Evelyn away.

“Maleficar!”

“Don’t touch me, damnit!” The mage bellowed, the whites of his eyes now fully red.

“That’s blood magic!” Iron Bull growled arms ready to pull Dorian out of Cullen’s way.

“Yes, and I’m helping her. Now let me help!”

“No! Stop! Please!”

A templar’s greatest weapon is not his sword or his faith, it is his Silence, to deny the influence of the Fade and make the works of the Maker’s Hand immutable, remaining as He made them. That was the first rule of engagement with mages.

“Do not reach for your sword!” Knight Captain Miraphora bellowed, fixing her bright dandelion gaze on the initiates. “When fighting a mage you do not fight with steel but with song. Amell! Are you ready?”

The pretty mage with the deep black hair nodded, licking her lips nervously. Every apprentice had to experience the choke of a Silence at least once and Solona drew today’s short straw. Extra short because Knight Captain Miraphora had one of the strongest Silences in the whole of the Circle.

“Begin!”

Amell began casting fire, flames ripping down from her elbows to her hands.

Blue light shimmered at the Knight Captain’s throat as she lifted voice in song.

“All things in this world are finite!”

At the end of the bar, the flame fizzled in Solona’s hands, the apprentice reaching toward her throat, tongue lolling as she struggled for breath. She crashed to her knees, gasping for air, ready to tear open her throat to somehow force the air in that way. Cullen turned his gaze away, her bulging eyes and wide open mouth too gruesome for him watch.

“Rutherford! Turn your face back! You watch!” His instructor screamed, grabbing him by the chin and forcing his eyes up and into Solona’s face. “You watch.” She said more tenderly now that she was close. The Silence dissipated, the flames hissed and disappeared as though doused in water and Amell collapsed. Had the Knight Captain not been holding him still, he would be at her side, heart too young and too foolish to know the danger just yet.

“I am sorry Solona.”

Another initiate helped her to her feet, a boy his own age with strawberry bronze hair and a goofy lopsided grin.

“We do not allow them to suffer. Cast your Silence to its affect, then release it. Before you ever lift your fist you lift your voice. It is the safest, fastest, and most effective way to subdue any and all magic. I showed you this not to torture her, but to make you all understand that your duty as templars, as the Maker’s Blades of Mercy, is to, at the end of all things, preserve life. The life of the people, yourself, your brethren, and mages. All lives are precious in the Maker’s eyes. Rutherford!”

Cullen snapped his attention back to the Knight Captain, his eyes having wandered watching Solona be led away by the bronze headed boy now blushing.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Lead the prayer, Benedictions 4:12!”

The young templars saluted and Cullen led the song.

_Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just._

He dug into the bottom of his soul for the Silence. Reaching for the dregs of lyrium in his blood, touching  the prayer to it as though striking a flint to catch a flame. Hoping, praying, needing that the lyrium would catch and the Silence trigger to stop this madness.

But no matter how hard he tried, how loud he sung, the flint would not spark fire and song did not catch. He could sing no Silence and Dorian's magic continued to creep along her skin.

“Stop!” He pleaded. “You'll kill her! Dorian!”

“I AM HELPING HER DAMN YOU!”

Dorian’s anger burst his magic apart, blanketing the mage and his friend in red tendrils of energy that grasped and reached and curled all over her, sinking into her skin. Something sparked in her body, pushed hard back against Dorian's magic. It burned him and he jerked away.

Evelyn's back arched and she screeched in pain. Dorian too reeled, stung and stabbed from the magical backlash.

“No! Evelyn!” Cullen lurched for them again, but Iron Bull moved faster to block his reaching hands.

“Commander stop!”

“He’s killing her!”

“No! No!” Dorian placed her back on the bed, hands and arms stinging from the magical backlash. Evelyn gasped. “Listen to me Cullen. I....I'm not strong enough for this. Whatever this is, it is too much for me. Anh Bao can help, let me get her. She can help.”

“There's more of you?!”

“Fasta vass Cullen! You waste time! That magic is killing her and she'll die if we don't get her help. Anh Bao is a blood mage, yes. But she taught me everything I know, she can save her. I need you to trust me, friend. Please.”

_Suffer not those bastards!_

_Cullen! Help me!_

_Burn them!_

_Hurt the hurters._

Brought to his knees, the agony spreading from his head to the rest of him. Breathing hurt, thinking, speaking, blinking hurt. The candlelight and the fire in the hearth hurt. His heartbeats hurt. Their voices hurt.

But the image of her, barely breathing, hurt worse.

“Can she help?” Choking on the words, he still reached for her from the floor, body given out from trying to do too much with too little.

“She's the only one who can.”

“Go.”

Dorian exhaled, if Cullen—even diminished as he was—decided to fight, Dorian would have no defense save the Iron Bull. And given the hurt look he was eying him with, he couldn't even bank on that protection.

**

Anh Bao’s quarters were at the other end of the keep, residences shoved haphazardly into a broken and crumbling tower previously unused. But between the freedmen, new templars and new mages, all unoccupied space no matter how distasteful became occupied. Evelyn didn’t yet have the funds to rebuild that tower, another worry on her long list of them.

He felt the Bull’s anger in the press of his hands at his waist, his arm the only thing keeping Dorian upright and walking. Dorian pouted, rolling his eyes, turning away from Iron Bull, every bit the petulant child. “Oh, don’t look at me like that.”

“Blood magic, kadan. Blood fucking magic. And you couldn’t tell us?”

“Given the Commander’s response just now, you can imagine why not.”

“Fair enough, but why even in the first place?” Dorian’s unsteady feet tripped and Bull snatched him close to keep him from falling.

“I wanted to help.”

“Then take up herbalism or alchemy or fucking basket weaving. Not Blood cunting Magic.” Iron Bull bellowed.

“You don’t understand what it feels like to be useless do you? To standby helplessly as others suffer without the tools to help. You almost died that day facing the dragon, and could have died facing the slavers after. I was useless, you cannot imagine how that makes me feel. And...Venhedis.”

“What? Kadan? Tell me. You owe me at least this.”

Dorian's shoulder's slumped, and he turned his face away from the Iron Bull's hot and demanding gaze. Blistering his skin like flame pressed to close to flesh. He felt the tears sting and well and fall.

“My father...I told you about....about what he tried to do but I never said how far he got.”

Bull quieted, he waited, ears open for Dorian to continue if he could.

“I felt the magic Bull. I felt it crawl up my skin, snaking for my brain. I felt it it tingle in me, change wrought as I floundered powerless against it. I struggled and I felt it fight back.”

Bull growled, low and threatening. If he ever met Halward Pavus he would shake his hand with an axe blade.

Dorian wiped away his shame born tears. “I was powerless. Useless against it. During the ritual someone must have let go, someone was lax. My magic exploded, one of the men—a slave for the love of fuck—holding me down died in the aftermath as I ran. He was simply doing as he was told and I killed him, a living being, a slave. And fled. I wanted to know. I wanted to know what he tried to do to me. I wanted to pick apart the magic drop by drop, I wanted to know it as intimately as I know myself and who I am, so it could never be used against me again.”

**

It was hard to watch her crest the hill over Haven with an army of mages in her wake instead of his brethren. A decision he swallowed bitterly, though made sweeter by his burgeoning attraction for the woman. He lived with those mages in fear, thinking them all one corner turn away from Kinloch or, _Maker_ , Kirkwall.

But her confidence eased him as had her faith. With friends like Dorian, allies like Vivienne, and colleagues like the Grand Enchanter—Cullen found peace, his grip on his fear slipping with every day passed, until it slipped away completely. Until he thought nothing of the playful magic cast in the courtyard, summer snowmen and fireballs that tickled instead of burned.

And maybe this was his punishment, he thought dryly, for becoming complacent, for allowing his vigilance to slip into comfortable friendship.

Late night, moon already gone, sunk in favor of a starless black sky. There was no ritual or ceremony in how he removed his armor. His surcoat came off, then his breastplate and gorget. Then greaves and vambraces leaving him in cloth and leather and no more metal. He unhooked his sword from his belt, laying it to the side of the bed.

He let her lay there watching her, searching for signs of a demon trying to crawl through her flesh. Cullen reached for her but his grasp stopped short, paralyzed between his fear and his need. Pulled in two different directions, Cullen remained rooted, sitting in a chair. Torn between holding her and driving a knife in her heart.

Varric told him his love for her brought out the best in him. Was his best really the casual and careful planning of violence against her?

_This is your fault._

_Your weakness exploited to ruin._

_Had you remained steadfast in your faith, you would have had the strength to prevent this.._

Strength only lasted so long, can only carry a man so far. He didn’t fight the subversion, he let the voices howl on, the only noise in the room save the sound of her harsh and labored breathing.

No strength left to cry.

To scream.

Or to even pray.

He shifted in the chair, sitting uncomfortably, body pushed forward, sitting on the very edge of it, neck resting against the back. His arms hung limp and swinging on either side of him, eyes raised to the ceiling begging wordlessly to his Maker for their deliverance, him and her both. A man without strength, drained dry of it.

The tinkle of glass striking stone startled him. He craned his neck to the side to see a philter of lyrium rolling in circles on the floor, fallen out of his pocket, forgotten, the dose Samson didn’t want to take.

Blue and cool and temptingly sweet.

_A moment’s reprieve Commander._

_Just a moment._

_You could have your strength back._

He stared at it.

Greedy hunger in his eyes.

**

Upon seeing him, Ahn Bao launched into Dorian’s chest, sobbing, forcing what little air he had in his lungs out. “Ser Pavus! Is she dead? Maker preserve me is she dead?”

Times like these he remembered she was only a child, barely 18 and already seen too much of the world. Untold horrors visited upon her during her time as a Circle mage, and horrors more experienced as a witness to the wars of the Inquisition. She was a small thing in his arms, seeming younger now than her 18 years of cruel life. He knew the Imperium needed correction, so too did the South. Two extremes, two different sides of the same coin both claiming superiority and both willfully blind to the suffering of the innocent.

Dorian spared her a moment of comfort. “She lives but not for long. We need your help.”

Anh Bao lifted tear and kohl streaked face from Dorian’s chest to ask breathlessly. “She’s alright?”

“No, she is dying but Lady Bao, if anyone can save her life it is you.”

Anh Bao bit her lip, sawing through it almost to bleeding.

“Will...but...the blood magic? Will they hurt me?”

“That doesn’t matter, the secret is out. Besides no one would dare hurt the woman who saved the Inquisitor’s life. No time to discuss we must go.”

She followed after, praying for strength.

**

They returned to Cullen holding Evelyn, cradling her, hand on her chest to count her breaths, to make sure they didn’t give out when they were gone.

Anh Bao mounted the steps to the Inquisitor’s chambers like a sinner come to judgement.

There was a templar here. The Knight-Commander. He would tear her apart she knew. She felt it. His golden gaze fell upon her and she froze, convinced he knew just by sight what she was.

“It’s alright Anh Bao. He knows.” Dorian assured her, hand on her shoulder, slim and bony under her robes.

The Iron Bull remained silent, uneased by the girl. Watching, searching for any signs of treachery. Dorian’s intentions were pure, her’s might not be.

Her teeth chattered as she approached the bed, cautious, as though the Commander were more a wounded beast than a man.

And to look at him, curled hair wild about his head, face red and blotchy, he was a beast. But he didn’t snarl at her when she drew close to the bedside, he whimpered.

“I saw you praying in the chapel. You were praying for her. She’s gotten worse. She is barely breathing. Can you help her? Please.”

Emotion too thick in her throat for speech she only nodded.

This was the Lady Herald, Andraste’s Blessed. Her savior. Maker sent for their deliverance, with this last act Anh Bao could repay her kindness.

For she was assured, no matter what happened this night, this would be her last act. Let the Maker see her devotion, and reward her faith.

“Do you need room?” Dorian asked quietly.

“No. I can feel his love, and hers. Even the very air is thick with it. That will help.”

A stray vine dangled over Evelyn’s face, Anh Bao pushed it aside, resting her hand on her forehead. The veins and arteries and capillaries in her skin stretched and pulsed with one solid throb, the lurch of a fluttering heartbeat.

Flushed with blood and magic they turned red to mimic the veins and arteries in Anh Bao’s own hand. The whites of her eyes filled with blood, swallowing up dark brown pupils. She looked demonic, possessed, a horror summoned from nightmares. Cullen fought the compulsion to pull away.

Evelyn squirmed and twisted in Cullen’s arms and under Anh Bao’s hands. He held tighter to her, if this be her death, let her go knowing she was loved. So loved.

The red laced down Evelyn’s neck, down into her arms and fingers, in her feet and toes that poked from the bottom of her dressing gown. Every vessel of blood rose in red relief in her skin, and where his skin met hers, seamlessly, sun against earth, the magic traced into him.

His eyes filled with blood.

And he was lost.

Lost in a stone room, shackled to the floor.

He raised his eyes and saw fingernails marks scratched into the stone in neat arrangements, patterns. Hash marks denoting the days passed.

95.

A bucket of filth sat overflowing in the corner, filling the room with it’s stench. He didn’t mind it, having grown deaf to the smell.

They brought him dinner. Moldy bread and water that somehow tasted sour, collected from roof run off rather than a well. He nibbled around the mold, drank the water in quick sips. Cullen rose from the floor rattling his chains and with his nail, marked another hash into the wall.

96.

She too was lost in a stone room, shackled by magic to the floor.

They put her under bright purple glass, like a lizard in a terrarium, a pet kept for their pleasure. She smelled ichor and blood. Her friends, her brethren, her charges lay in bloody heaps around her prison granted the agony of a painful death while she was sentenced to suffer the agony of impotent witness.

The demons made her watch as they ripped apart everything she ever knew or loved including the woman with dark the black hair.

Only her faith sustained her, kept the madness at bay.

She knelt.

She prayed.

**

Red vines grew between the three of them, though they looked more like roots, anchoring them together. Evelyn lay between the two, her breath slowing, deepening.  

“Dorian. I don’t like this at all.”

“I know. But I don’t know if there’s anything we can do at this point.”

“So what happens if they all die?”

Dorian had no answer for him.

**

His hands were smaller and bonier and browner than he knew them. His hair, crusted with filth and grease was long, straight, and black, not the short curls of gold his mother loved.

He dressed in robes, not armor.

And when they came for him, Blade of Mercy glowing like a branding iron on their chest, like the ones they held to his skin, his screams had none of his tenor.

**

She felt heavy, weighed down not only by the magic that confined her but by metal greaves, and breastplate.

Magic did not come at her command but songs did, the Chant suffusing her with blue light that cracked and fizzled ineffectively at the bubble encasing her.

When the woman made of muscle came for her accompanied by a hound, a dark haired witch, a sweet faced healer, and a flame haired archer, she begged with unfamiliar voice to kill every creature that wrought this carnage, everything spoiled with magic’s taint.

**

Everything blurred, filtered through a red haze. The stone walls disappeared, obliterated and destroyed. He emerged into open air, seeing his harshmarked stones in the rubble he stepped over.

He pulled his robes tighter to him. No magic, no cloth warm enough to combat the wind. He shivered, shaken by empty stomach and emptier heart.

The first time he saw her was from the ground, hands raised against a templar’s blade that he was assured would finally end his life.

She rode him down from the back of a white hart, crushing him before he could strike.

“Promise me you won’t fight and you will be safe with us.”

He knelt in the dirt and wept, convinced it was the Maker’s Providence.

**

She felt cold in the city, even in the summer.

Nothing brought her peace. Constant and unwavering vigilance, the Maker demanded it of her.

And still the city burned in fire and blood and magic.

Peace was bitter fought and hard won after that, but she made it worth it.

She made _everything_ worth it.

She was worth the pain and the craving.

She was worth her trust, even if it meant surrendering that same trust to mages, and despite everything

She granted that trust.

**

He could not grant trust. The Herald didn’t know what he went through. What horrors he suffered.

No matter her intent, no matter her strength, the templars always...they can never be trusted with life again. They take it, they always take it!

He begged her that day she announced that Circles would return. On bended knee he begged. She cried with him, made him promises. Oh, if only he could make her understand!

 _He must make her understand_!

**

Anh Bao moaned softly, her magic withdrawn. Her memories, the correct ones, returned to her, pulled back from the templar’s mind.

Cullen gasped, shaking his head, tears falling from eyes that faded from red to white. His mind righted itself, crippled by memories that weren’t his, took a few shaky steps before focusing on the form in his arms. The one that looked up at him, weak smile on a tired face.

“Straw head?” Her voice cracked with dry disuse. “ What happened? Why is everyone crying? I am so hungry. Got anything to eat?”

Her plea for food muffled in Cullen’s shirt as he smothered her in an embrace that threatened to undo all Anh Bao’s work.

Dorian and the Iron Bull rushed to the bed side, the mage hemming and hawing, placing hands on Evelyn’s forehead like a nurse searching for a fever.

“Anh Bao what did you do? My magic backfired, something repelled me, but you were able to overcome it. What did you do differently?”

“Nothing.” she answered brokenly. “I didn’t do anything different from what I taught you.”

“Then how, how did the magic not...?”

“It was her magic in the first place.” Cullen answered for her.

Anh Bao shuddered, dropping her chin to her chest, shoulders trembling under guilty tears, waiting for holy judgement to pass. She deserved it, her righteous fury, expecting at any moment for hands to close around her neck.  

She felt those hands and sobbed a tiny prayer for forgiveness.

“Anh Bao.”

The young blood mage opened her eyes to see the Lady Herald and her Commander, one hand from each on her shoulders.

“Thank you.” He said.

The Herald simply smiled.

Dizzied by the implication, Dorian stepped away, nausea twisting up his guts

“Tell me you didn’t.” He hissed, hands curled into fists.

Anh Bao turned to her student, fear stricken across her features.

“I’m sorry!”

She threw herself to his feet, hands pressed together, steepled as though in worshipful prayer.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I only wanted to change her mind. I never wanted to hurt her. My magic went wrong, I thought I could control it. You must believe me. I never wanted to hurt her!”

He backed away further, turning his back to her lest in his rage he lash out with fist or fire.

“Do you realize what you have done. The danger… and I... I defended you! I thought there was no way that you…You did the one thing. The one unforgivable sin. The one thing you told me the one you swore you would never do. You taught me blood magic to _serve_ when I was convinced all it could do was _rule_. We were supposed to be different!”

“I only wanted to change her mind, make her stop with the Circles. Please!”

“And she almost died for it! _I_ almost died for it!”

“I’m sorry please!”

“Enough!” Twin voices called from the bed. One cracked, one bellowed.

“Iron Bull.” The bellower. “Take Anh Bao to her room. She will be confined to her quarters.”

Dorian scoffed

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Cullen continued. “When he comes back _you_ are to be confined to quarters as well.”

“What! What in the Void did I do? She’s the hapless assassin!”

Anh Bao strangled on a sob.

“And you’re the blood mage,” Cullen answered easily.

“Are you fucking…I was helping!”

“You asked me to trust you before. Dorian, Bull I need you both to extend that trust to me now. Skyhold will eat itself if the culprit is not brought to justice for all to see.”

“What in the name of Burning Andraste do you mean!” Dorian paced the room, beside himself, Bull convinced at any moment the tips of his moustache might start smoking if not outright catch flame.

“You both are confined to quarters. And tomorrow there will be a judgement.”

“A judgement! Evelyn just woke up from death, she is in no condition...”

Cullen squeezed Evelyn’s hand, she nodded and squeezed feebly back.

“I know, that’s why _I’m_ going to do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lot's of stuff goin' on. Call me with your questions at mirabai0821.tumblr.com  
> Maker this is long. Apologies.


	13. Judgement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter to make up for the monsters that got posted last couple go rounds

Bull took both mages away, surprisingly cooperative given that Cullen was asking him to lock away his lover. Dorian only made a token effort to fuss. “Confining me to my quarters eh? You won’t even need to make a trip to the dungeon for the chains.”

Anh Bao just went along quietly.

Too late to sleep, not early enough to rise, the pair lay in her bed together, clutched, both knowing how very close they’d come to being separated.

“How are you feeling?”

“Hungry still.”

Cullen soured. Breakfast was the meal eliminated in the rationing.

“I should be able to find something in the kitchens.”

“Wait.” Her fingers tightened in his tunic, grip weak, but he held fast anyway. “Just stay.”

He stayed, climbing back into the bed with her, pulling her tight.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

She dug her face into his chest. “I remember too much. I remember praying in stone tower, crying for a lady with dark hair. I remember branding irons and empty stomachs. I remember blue eyes that...nevermind. I remember all that and not all that stuff’s mine.”

The press of his fingers dug so deep into her skin, like shovels to reach the heart of her to heal her with the magic he didn’t have.

“Tell me what you want. Whatever you decide, I’ll do.”

The threat was implicit in his deep voice, the kind he only used when making those promises he always kept.

_I’m here. You’re safe._

_I will stay with you, my lady, no matter what, no matter for how long._

_Demand her life and I’ll take it._

“I’m supposed to be angry. I think I am angry. But I don’t feel it. I just feel sad.”

Evelyn shuddered, and he drew her blankets around them. “Cullen, you know she didn't mean it?”

“I do.” And he did. “But Anh Bao walked right over her good intentions straight down the road to perdition.”

“And now you’ve got to decide what to do with her.”

It would be easy. So easy for him. Easy to pick up the sword or the brand and be done.

And that’s how he knew it was wrong.

“Evelyn do you trust me?” She was dozing against him, the sound of her name bringing her out of the comforting haze of waking and sleeping and his arms.

She smiled weakly for him, so sweet it hurt them both.

“Implicitly.”

**

He left her in the care of her friends, easing them gently into the news about Dorian’s blood magery and Anh Bao’s role in both B’s attack and her recovery. They took the news well enough, some better than most.

“Wait so Sparkler’s a blood mage?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s not  _the_ blood mage. Not the one who hurt Evelyn?”

“No. But he has to stand trial too. Varric why are you writing all this down?”

“Because truth is stranger--better than fiction. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried!”

Cullen groaned. “Just watch her okay. She’s still very weak. I have to prepare for the...judgement.”

“Oh you got it.”

Rylen had worked through the night preparing reports on the three templars and to gather what scant information he could about Anh Bao. She came from the Circle in Hasmal, one that fell violently when the war started--one also known for their particularly strict treatment of mages, their Knight Commander taking several leaves from Meredith’s blood soaked book.

“I can’t really find any more information about her. She came to Skyhold not long after Haven and has distinguished herself in no other way. She has no friends or colleagues that I could find among us and she mentioned no family.  She assisted Apprentice Nashir and the healers after the battle with Corypheus, but beyond that, we have nothing on her.”

“Thank you Rylen. Please gather your men to ready the prisoners.” Cullen waved away his second, not really needing more information. He’d seen enough of her memories to fill in the gaps.

“What will you do with them?” Rylen asked, judgement only an hour or so away.

“The right thing I hope.”

**

The news about Dorian, his blood magic, and his impending judgement could not dampen the relief they all felt to see her better. Not whole according to Fiona--awed that blood magic had triumphed where conventional magic failed, but better.

“How are you feelin’ Boss?”

“Head’s fuzzy. Head hurts. But I’ll live. Dorian?”

“Pissed.” Bull spent the night with an agitated Dorian, stressed and anxious over today’s proceedings.

“And how are you?” He thought about it, mulling the question over, stewing in it actually.

“Dor’s got reasons. I wish he hadn’t kept them from me.”

“Will you forgive him?”

“Oh I been done that Boss, I just haven’t  _told_  him yet.”

They crowded her bed, asking her questions, bringing her food from the kitchens. Cassandra stayed closest to her, kept staring at her with serious glares, searching for demons hidden behind her weary eyes.

“Cassandra. Stop.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t.”

“I spent the entire night in the arms of a templar. I think he’d know.”

“Or is….is too attached to take a more critical look.”

“Am I possessed Cassandra?” She asked outright, pushing her face into Cassandra’s bringing them eye to eye and nose to nose.

The Seeker relented. “No. I am just worried my friend. I’ve never known blood magic to be helpful.  You can understand, then, my wariness.”

“I do.” Evelyn reached for Cassandra’s hand. “Seeker. If something like that ever does happen to me. He’ll want to be the one who...don’t let him.”

“On that you have my solemn vow Inquisitor.”

Samson lingered in the far corner of her quarters, a regular if not yet accepted member of the group. He gave her a solid nod, muttering to himself something about the constitution of a druffalo.

When a page knocked, announcing the judgement’s commencement, they left her one by one, making promises to return as soon as it was finished. Hopefully with a free Dorian in tow.

“You not comin’ lady Herald?” Samson asked after they left.

“Sam, I can barely talk at length, and sitting up exhausts me.”

She paused, that little bit of effort requiring a rest. “The people don’t need to see me like this. Hey! WHAT!!”

Samson scooped her up, taking her down the stairs toward the door.

“I'm not missin’ my chance to watch you watch him make a fool of himself trying to be you. You didn't hafta see him moonin’ over you like a wounded dog.”

“Samson, according to Fiona, I was  _dying_.”

 He made a mock retching noise. “Yeah, but you didn't  _see_  him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of this could not have been done without the wonderful support of divadevi8808 or Miraphora. Thank you ladies, my de facto and de jure beta readers. Sorta. Kinda. You make this possible and coherent.


	14. Judgement pt. 2

All of Skyhold, as much as could be fit inside the grand hall, turned up for the judgement. The rest spilled out into the courtyard with criers on elevated platforms relaying the goings on inside to those unfortunate to be stuck outside.

Josephine made Cullen sit on the Inquisitor’s throne.

“Be lucky I’m not making you wear the crown. They need to see you act with her full authority. Sitting on the throne exemplifies that.”

“It’s just a chair Josie.”

Josephine scoffed. “It’s just a chair’ he says. Is a crown ‘just a hat’? Is a scepter ‘just a stick’? Material things they may be, yet they are the investiture of power Commander, same as your mantle.”

“My mantle is practical, not ceremonial.” Cullen shifted in his chair trying to find comfort in thin cushion of the Inquisitor’s throne.

“Then why were you late to our meeting with the Orlesian trade guild last week scaring our poor tailor to death because you insisted you needed it immediately.”

“I didn’t...…. They were _Orlesian_ , I didn’t want them to see me without….I look smaller without it on.”

“See, investiture of power.”

While Evelyn slouched, relaxed in her title of Inquisitor, Cullen sat up ramrod straight, trying to affect her easy confidence yet instead lending credence to the rumors about sticks stuck up asses.

Rylen’s soldiers, all former Starkhaven templars, escorted the prisoners into the hall songs for Silence at the ready should the mages choose to fight. Dorian walked proudly, fixing a hot silver stare on the Commander, rattling his chains. He was ready to grant the Commander his trust but being chained up like an animal--worse, a _guilty_ animal, strained his patience. Exceedingly worse than that was being forced to stand accused next to Anh Bao-- the real maleficar. She hadn’t earned his forgiveness yet and she possibly might never.

Anh Bao had not raised her eyes since leaving the Inquisitor’s quarters, relying on her guards to ensure she didn’t walk off a precipice, though she might welcome the earth swallowing her up. The Commander and the Lady Herald seemed grateful, but their thanks did not translate into forgiveness.

Cullen’s own soldiers accompanied the templars who walked without humility, struggling against their chains, righteous in their conviction even in the face of attempted murder chargers.

The prisoners stood before the Commander in judgement, before all of Skyhold, man and his Maker; Cullen himself among the judged.

“Dorian Pavus and Lady Anh Bao stand accused of blood magic.” Josephine announced.

“The templars, Knight Captain Celedona Rougeier, Ser Pedro Villareal,  and Initiate Amantha Bardo stand accused of attempted murder against Ser Pavus. They are all presented to you, Commander, who stands in place of our Inquisitor, to render justice.”

“Release us, Knight-Commander, we have done no wrong.” The Knight Captain shouted at the end of Josephine’s pronouncement. Celedona. The two lower ranked templars stood behind her, using her almost like a shield. Initiate Bardo actually physically clung to her, her bound hands wrapped around her elbow.

“Knight Captain, I will forgive your outburst, but you will refer to me as Commander only. I will not forgive a second mistake.”

“Templars never leave the Order _Commander_ , I suspect you well know this.”

 _More like parts of the Order never leave them_ , he thought, taking note of the buried but still present pain in his temples.

“Knight Captain, you are from Ostwick’s Circle are you not?”

“Aye.”

“Initiate, you also?”

“Y-yes...it fell right before I was to take my vows.”

“Ser Villareal?”

“I am from the Antiva Circle, Commander.”

“And do any of you have anything to say for yourselves before judgement is called?”

“Pardon, but did you say _judgement_?” Celedona startled, arrogance clear in her veilfire eyes. “I was led to believe this was a mere formality before being released.”

“What made you think there was anyway I was going to release you?”

“You must, we’ve done no wrong!”

“I’d like to point out this hideous bruise as evidence of ‘done no wrong’.” Dorian snarled, gesturing to the purple and yellow blotch that consumed most of his left cheek. He could heal it if he wanted to, without even the need to bleed himself, but the bruise was big and ugly and therefore perfect for winning sympathy. How could they be angry at a blood mage with a face like this?

The crowd in the hall laughed, Iron Bull the loudest. Blood mage or not, Dorian still could command an audience.

“Quiet maleficar! The only charge I am guilty of is that my attempted murder did not succeed.” Celedona snapped, her two Templars stood straighter but still behind her. Amantha shielded her gaze by directing it at the floor, and Pedro studied his chained hands intently. Only Celedona had the courage to meet Cullen’s gaze, only Celedona had the courage to speak.

Hundreds of eyes landed on him, multiplying over and over again to one million eyes, all eyes. Every eye in existence that came before and would come after settled their gaze on Cullen Rutherford’s weary shoulders waiting for the words he would say next. Their simplicity startled them all.

“Are you templars Ser Villareal, Initiate Bardo?”

A tense gasp ripped through the room, traveling down and out of the hall, tearing through the lookers on outside.

“I…I…” Amantha stammered, flushing red under her judge’s stare.

“Are you or are you not a templar?” he repeated.

Amanata squeaked looking to the Knight Captain for help or an answer.

“Do not look at her!” Cullen snarled, leaning forward in the throne. “She cannot answer for you now. Answer for yourself. She did not move your limbs as you beat a man almost to death so do not look to her to move your tongue. Answer me!”

“Y—ye…”

“Quiet recruit! Knight Commander I fail to see how that is relevant.”

“I will remind you again Ser, of my proper address. The questions asked come only from me. Are you a templar Knight Captain Celedona?”

“ _Yes._ ” Her answer, though barely uttered sounded across the hall. Spoken with conviction and unshakeable faith.

“Know you the range on your Song of Blessed Blades maneuver?”

“Four meters.”

“Threnodies 12:1.”

“Did you come to administer a quiz or judgement?”

“Answer me!”

“Those who had sought to claim /Heaven by violence destroyed it.”

“What is a templar’s greatest weapon?”

Celedona had no answer for this. Cullen turned to her conspirators and repeated the question.

“Ser! Initiate! A templar’s greatest weapon?”

Pedro and Amantha both stuttered weak answers, barely audible to Cullen and inaudible to the rest of the hall. Dorian wrinkled his face, also confused. He never experienced templars in the Imperium. He knew of them, he knew personally maybe half a handful, but before coming South he never saw a templar in action.

Anh Bao knew the answer though, but did not trust herself or the strength of her voice to speak it.

In the confused murmur, Celadona regained her confidence. “I’ve yet to see how this is relevant to--”

“You’ve already professed to be a templar and proven yourself a somewhat competent one. Yet you’ve forgotten a basic tenant of templar training. Allow me to remind you. ‘When engaging mages, templars are required to use no more force than what is required to mitigate an incident, apprehend a mage, or protect themselves and others from harm.’ Our greatest weapon allows us to subdue _without_ harm, with no need for violence. And you did not use it! None of you. Not one! Driven by the compulsion to _rule_ rather than _serve_.”

”HE WAS USING BLOOD MAGIC!” Celedona screamed.

“AND HE IS MY FRIEND!” Cullen screamed right back.

“You hear that? I'm his friend, complete with friendship bracelets and everything.” Dorian shook his chains again earning him another round of laughter from the crowd.

The Commander and the Knight Captain, though, continued their battle of convictions.

“You reacted on instinct, I can forgive that. But as a Knight Commander you _know_ your Silence was the best, most effective way to stop Dorian if you thought he needed to be stopped! You abandoned the rules of engagement in favor of your blood lust and that I will _not_ forgive.”

“But…but…” she sputtered before a cool deadly calm settled on her face. Her stammering ceased, replaced with iron surety. “You ask me Commander, if I have forgotten. I ask you the same question, because of the two of us, you’re the one who has forgotten. You served at Kinloch, _Kirkwall_! You saw what blood magic can do. Experienced its evil first hand. How quaint that you can forget such horrors while the rest of us suffer tainted bloody memories!”

“Bite your blighted fucking tongue!” A familiar drawl echoed from Vivienne’s former solar at the back of the hall. Samson. “I knew the man at Kirkwall and let me tell you he ain’t forgotten shit. None of us do!”

Peering past Samson to a tiny cushioned chair Vivienne left behind, hidden in the dark corners, folded in the tapestry and banners, he saw Evelyn. He couldn’t see her the detail of her face, couldn’t tell if she was smiling or grimacing in lingering pain. But she was there, watching him, her hand rising in a little wave, her head bent in a slight nod.

_You got this, straw head. I’m here, you’re safe._

“Knight Commander.” He turned back to Celedona, anger cooler yet still bubbling like a pot brought down from a boil to a simmer. “Do not think I do not understand your fear. By Andraste’s Holy Sword I do. But you are Templars as I once was, you serve a purpose greater than your fear. Your fear nearly cost a life. As did yours Lady Bao.”

He addressed with no malice, her name spoken softly. She still flinched.

“I didn’t want to hurt her.”

_What?_

_Speak up!_

_I can’t hear!_

The crowd carried on, Cullen did not care. “I know. I saw. But despite what you meant, you did. And even if you didn’t hurt her, it would have been worse if you succeeded. Possession. Influence. Blood magic cannot, can never be used…

This way.”

Anh Bao’s face slackened, the distinction clear in his tone and his gaze. “Commander?”

“Yes, I agree. Commander?” Dorian repeated.

“Dorian you are blood mage and I suspect you won’t contest that.”

“Guilty.” Dorian quipped back in a sing song voice no longer bothered by his shackles.

The crowded shouted. “Quiet!” Cullen roared and the Hall fell back to a hushed din.

“The charges leveled against me are true.” Dorian continued. “I am a blood mage. I use blood magic. BUT I AM NO DIFFERENT!” He raised his voice when the Hall rose again, “Than any other mage here. I use my blood magic to protect and defend. To heal the Inquisitor’s allies and to potentially destroy her enemies.”

“And what were you doing when those templars attacked you.” Cullen asked quietly.

“I was healing her. I saw that she was under attack. She is my friend. I went to her aid.” Dorian replied casually.

Another gasp ripped through the hall while shouts could be heard from outside. Celadona barked her laughter, “Absurd.”

“I said hold your tongue!” Cullen hissed.

“Or I’ll have it cut from you!” Heads snapped back to Vivienne’s solar. Samson raised her out of the shadows, propping her up against him--still unable to stand without help. Her chest heaved with her roar, exhausted by the effort, but Cullen’s heart soared to hear-- strengthened by the magic in her voice. Celedona fell silent in her wake.

_The Herald!_

_She’s alive!_

_The Inquisitor lives!_

“Aye, she does.” Enchanter Fiona agreed, stepping out from the crowd. “Me and mine tried everything we could to revive her and nothing worked. I was not there to witness it, but where my magic couldn’t restore her. Apparently his did.”

“We do not ban swords for killing people, nor daggers, nor staves. We ban blood magic though. Why? Because the Chantry tells us it’s verboten? When they use it themselves? Blood magic is a tool and like any other tool, its maliciousness lies in its use. And while my use of blood magic did not save her life it tried.”

Dorian finished his little speech, watching the crowd, waiting to see their reaction. These were people who were taught to live in fear of all magic, and yet most still learned to live with mages as equals. He would prove that a blood mage was worth the same consideration. He found the gazes of friends in the crowd, drinking buddies, soldiers, scouts, training partners, and scholars. He smiled at them. Most smiled back.

Pleased with his performance, Dorian bowed as much as his bound arms allowed him.

Cullen rolled his eyes, smiling at his friend. “Are you done?”

“Of course. Render your judgement Commander.”

“Set him free.”

“Oh goodie!” Dorian preened, winking at the guard who unlocked the chains on him. He gave his wrists a good rub as he pushed his way through the crowd making his way to the Iron Bull. The crowd parted around him, people shoving to make room for the blood mage to make his way. They were wary of him despite the logic of his words.

“Ser Pavus is restored to the Inquisition with full privileges and is allowed to practice his _healing_ arts of blood magic without molestation.”

Celadona roared with laughter.

“The healing arts of blood magic? Are you insane Commander? What will you permit next, friendly abominations?”

“How do you know that I haven’t.” He answered, convinced he could hear a chuckling dwarf somewhere in the crowd’s laughter.

“And while you all laugh yourselves to the Void, one maleficar walks free while the other stands silent. And what will her punishment be? A walk among the castle grounds?”

Irritation flared in his veins, making him long for his Knight-Commander’s sash, when mouthy subordinates found themselves only able to speak in the appropriate verse like a common Chanter.

Still...

“Anh Bao, Dorian said his magic didn’t’ save the Inquisitor’s life. Who’s did?”

“Mine.” Her bowed head smothered a great deal of her volume, but those who needed to hear it, heard it.

“And for that you have my gratitude. All of our gratitude.”

The love in his voice was hard to miss, his words choked on it. There were more than a few ‘awws’ from the crowd, mostly from Sera and Iron Bull, and a distinct and curious retching sound coming from somewhere deep in the back.

“Your assistance however, cannot undo what you’ve done. Were it not for you, your assistance would not have been necessary. Anh Bao. I understand.” He hoped his stare conveyed what he meant to say. That he knew why. That he _saw_.

_And that he was sorry._

“You will be remanded to Circle Skyhold. You will continue your lessons with Dorian and craft a program to vet and train future blood mages with templar oversight. You will also remain there indefinitely.”

Unable watch the woman’s face slacken in horror he turned to the templars. “As for you, Sers and Initiate, you are all are stripped of your rank and discharged from the Order. You will also be sent as prisoners to Griffon Wing Keep, kept as far away from any mage as I can send you where you will work to earn your freedom. Bardo and Villareal, I understand how it feels to be betrayed a by a superior, consider this your only warning. When you have labored to my satisfaction, if you wish, you may return to the Order as recruits. Hopefully your education the second time around will stick. However Knight Captain, you are barred from the Order for life. In light of this, certain concessions will need to be made for your health. We will speak again privately but for now consider the matter closed and this judgement adjourned.”

The crowd gasped, some applauding. Celedona shrieked and Anh Bao’s knees gave out. The mage fell upon the floor, begging. “Please! No! Anything but this. Kill me! Tranquil me! Just not that. Don’t trap me in a Circle again! I won’t do it again! I swear I won’t please!”

She was a child he remembered, 18 according to Rylen’s report. Barely grown and begging him for her life. It would be easy to let her go. Easy to turn a blind eye to her sin in light of her fears and her assistance after the fact. Easy to just forgive and forget.

And that’s how he knew

It was wrong.

“Please!” She shouted as the crowd milled. Some remained, eager to see the rest of the drama unfold. Others were more eager to queue for the early afternoon rationing. The earlier in line, the warmer the food.

Pedro let himself be led away quietly, head bowed and countenance solemn. Amantha too allowed her guards to take her, abandoning her former Knight Captain to stand alone stricken deaf, dumb, and paralyzed.

“I won’t do it again.” Anh Bao sobbed as her guards tried to lift her from the floor, coaxing her gently back to her feet.

Something pulled at Cullen, like a snagged string. Familiar, tingling, he heard the song in his head, come to him through muscle memory.

_Those who oppose thee…_

“I won’t do it again!”

“No, maleficar, you won’t!”

Cullen made a mistake. Too confident in the strength of his guards and the strength of their vigilance, too confident in the strength of the bonds that held the prisoners. Celedona was a Knight Captain for a reason, she would have been a Knight-Commander had her Circle not fell. The Templar twisted in her bonds, shook loose of the guards, and pulled a dagger free from the struggle.

Celedona screamed as she lunged for Anh Bao.

“Shall know the Wrath of Heaven!”

“Stop!”

Celedona’s Wrath of Heaven triggered, stunning all her guards, wringing a pained shriek from Anh Bao and inciting panic in the crowd. Cullen staggered and dropped to his knees, immobilized too by the prayer, hand frozen on the hilt of his sword.

Celedona’s dagger sliced for her enemy’s flesh, for her heart or her throat. The woman felt the azure light of her Maker burning through her, illuminating her with a light that could be nothing but holy. But her twisted sneer evoked no divinity and her wild red hair looked more like flames than a halo. She was a rage demon summoned from the Void to spread destruction.

“Die!”

The blade struck against something wet, and red, and solid.

The blade turned, bent, and snapped.

Dorian, blood in his eyes, expanded his barrier to push the woman back and away, right into Samson who held her fast.

And into Evelyn who snarled and struck her hard in the jaw, breaking it and three of her knuckles.

“That was…” She heaved, legs wobbling like a newborn calf’s “For Dorian...you bitch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words are inefficient enough to describe how helpful divadevi8808 has been in constructing the particulars of this arc. And words cannot express how glad I am to be rid of this. UGH it was HARD!


	15. Falling Action

“So do you have to carry a razor everywhere or…?”

“Will you shut up and hold still.”

Dorian pressed on her fractured hand, soothing the bruising and the swelling. The bones twisted and realigned, with his magic he set and knit the tiny breaks.

Rather than watch her hand be pieced back together, Evelyn focused on Dorian, watching the whites of his eyes redden and stain like dye swimming in white fabric.

“That’s definitely going to take getting used to. Does it hurt?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your eyes.”

“I don’t really feel it. I never knew it until Anh…” Dorian halted on the name, frowning. “She put a mirror in front of me the first time I tried, scared the Void out of me. But no it doesn’t hurt.”

“Are you alright? About Anh Bao I mean?”

Dorian and Evelyn were alone in her quarters. Cullen seeing to the prisoners’ accommodations and everybody else restoring order in the Keep.

“No. I am not alright about Anh Bao.” Her betrayal was enough to make him regret the whole endeavor. He told her of his one and only encounter with blood magic, how it had been used–almost successfully to change him. She cried with him, swearing to him that they would never use their blood magic thus. “‘Do no harm’, she told me. Reassuring me as though I were the bloody teenager. A fine fucking mess this all is, wouldn’t you say sorora?”

He poured them glasses of water and they drank them in quick swallows before grinning at each other with sly smirks as Dorian reached for her liquor cabinet.

He poured them stiff drinks, whiskey, the Tevinter kind—the good kind.

She smiled sipping her drink, it burned the corners of her mouth, her tongue, and her lips, the heat reminding her that it was perhaps unwise to drink so deeply so early and with little food in the stomach. “Why didn’t you say anything fratoro? I would have understood.”

He regarded her with a confused expression, intending to play only a little dumb before deciding better of it. Both of them almost died because he kept his secrecy.

“Blood magic isn’t exactly the most welcome of practices you realize.”

“For good reason.”

“Yes, but I thought I’d found a better reason to try it. I’m a shitty healer, the great Dorian Pavus before could barely set a bone. Now look.” He gestured to her healing hand, wrapped in bandages to protect the freshly set bone. “I wanted to help. Those slaves we rescued, I wanted to help them.”

“There was no other way?”

“This was a fine way. Like I said magic isn’t inherently evil, a sword doesn’t murder people. Its wielder does. Blood magic can be more. I’ve proven, more than once now, that it  _is_  more.”

“So why the lack of trust?”

“Look what happened! The Iron Bull had to hold the Commander down as I tried to restore you to him.  Then, after all was revealed he gave me this heartbreaking little look as if I had the green fucking plague! I was right to mistrust.”

“Cullen hasn’t the best relationship with blood magic you understand!” Her temper flared before weakness–and intoxication–tamped it back down. “And Bull’s a fucking qunari, they don’t have the best record with mages of any kind let alone a blood mage.”

On a good day, Dorian could neutralize her temper with a well placed quip or his devastating sarcasm. On better days, he matched her temper with his own.

“If we’re comparing faults then there’s also the mage/templar war threatening to restart right under your nose, there’s your unfortunate money and ally situation, and you pissing off the Chantry. You’re doing a marvelous job, Inquisitor, I almost wish for Corypheus back.”

“Me fucking too!” The whiskey burned in them both, stoking a bright fire with little heat. They yelled, brother and sister, but the fire they spat did not burn. “At least then my best friend was a regular mage who didn’t lie to me.”

“I tried to save your life and got a face full of bruises and a chest full of broken ribs for my efforts, without so much as a ‘sorry’ you ungrateful brat!”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you LIED to us when you didn’t have to! Besides, I punched that bitch straight in her fucking mouf!” Evelyn slurred.

“The secrets I kept weren’t just for my safety but for Anh Bao’s too!”

Evelyn paused, holding her tumbler out for more whiskey, Dorian begrudgingly obliged and poured more for himself.

“More damnit!” She swallowed her finger and shoved the glass back into Dorian’s face. He tilted the bottle until it dripped empty.

Evelyn snorted, shaking her head. “Hope you realize once this is gone we probably won’t be able to get anymore.”

“Fasta vass then.” He clinked his glass against hers demanding she share her overabundance. She did, spilling a little liquor on her chair cushion. “Maker! That’s a twenty year single malt whiskey, have a care Evelyn!”

She withdrew her glass out of spite before evening out their liquor. She brought the glass to her lips and tilted it, delighting in Dorian’s horrified eyes.

“Apologize.” She said, liquid fiery solace creeping too close to lips of no return.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

“For?”

“For being a secret keeping asshole.”

“And?” She took a rattling sip.

“And for calling you a brat! I didn’t mean it! Evelyn!” He whined.

With a satisfied chuckle she pulled the glass down from her mouth and portioned out the whiskey evenly.

“Friends still?” Dorian offered his glass in toast.

“Friends.” She met his glass with her own clinking them together with a light ringing click. “It’s gonna take some time for everyone else. Including Bull.”

“I know.”

“And Anh Bao?”

“What about her?” Dorian asked with a dismissive chuff.

“She was your friend.”

“Until she almost killed you.”

“Do you know why?”

“It doesn’t matter why. But yes, I do.”

“No it doesn’t matter. And now she’ll pay for that mistake by having her worst fear realized.”

He scoffed. “From what I understand of your southern circles, she got off pretty light. Her punishment is far better than the death or tranquility she was begging for.”

“Which goes to show how fucked this is to her considering that she was begging for them.”

Dorian laughed unkindly in his glass. “You’re the Inquisitor. If you feel so strongly about it, let her go.”

“I won’t undermine him.”

“Look at you two, skipping the marriage part and heading straight into disciplinary parenting part.

B’s face wrinkled with a wistful looking frown. Dorian put down his glass, but not after finishing the last mouthful in a large gulp, and wrapped a consoling arm around his friend.

“Oh Maker. I’m sorry. I am the ass they say I am aren’t I?”

Evelyn nodded sloshing the liquor in her head and her glass. “Besides. He can’t let her go. If we’re gonna make this blood magic thing work, there has to be consequences for when it’s abused. Same as any other criminal misuse of magic.”

“I suppose not.”

“Will you still work with her?”

“I don’t know everything just yet, nor with any kind of finesse. I still need practice so yes, we’ll continue on.”

“Good. We’ll still need you, and after that little stunt with the blood barrier, seems like the regular folk are at least…permissive if not fascinated by your particular talents.”

“Yes well how do I convince the seven foot qunari in my bedroom not to sew my lips shut?”

“Dorian,” Evelyn made shooing motions with her hands, it was time for the morose mage to leave, she had things to do. “If he hasn’t by now, I think you’re good.”

**

Her captors added insult to her injury. Two mages side by side deadening her limbs with their crushing arcane spells. The gag in her mouth arrested any sung prayers, preventing another stunt like what happened in the Grand Hall.

“That will be all.” Cullen nodded to the mages. They looked at him warily.

“Ser?”

“I can handle myself. Dismissed.”

The mages saluted and left the Commander with the fallen Knight Captain. Celedona glared at him from under her bent neck. There was still time left on the last mage’s spell.

Meredith had ice blue eyes and blonde hair almost white in it’s paleness, but Celdeona could have been her sister or her daughter even with her green eyes and russet locks by virtue of the stare she was fixing on him now. The kind of look that meant ‘You will do as I command Cullen.’

The memory shook him. Meredith was a specter that didn’t visit him often, only stopping by long enough to remind him of her tortured screams as the red lyrium ate her body from the inside out. The Chantry meant to have all templars consumed by the stuff, leashed to the liquid and the masters who poured it, or cast away to rot from it–a punishment for forsaken vow.

“You have a choice now. One that was not given to you when you joined the Order, but will be given to you now and all templars as they leave it.”

He gently removed her gag, taking care not to let a finger stray too long at her mouth lest she close her teeth on it. “I assume you mean lyrium.”

“I do.”

“Rutherford.” She spat the name upon the floor along with the dry cotton taste of her gag. Could she move he thought she might make the motion of grinding it under her heel. “You’ve taken everything from me. Allow me then, to keep this at the last.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I choose it. If you’ve denied me life as a templar, do not deny me death as one.”

“I won’t. Bardo and Villareal made the same choices.”

“Because they get to come back.”

“You can be one without it.”

“I wonder how effective?” She sneered.

He sang and he sang, he prayed with his voice when Dorian took the blood magic to Evelyn’s skin and nothing triggered.

“Your silence tells me not very.”

“You will be moved to Griffon Wing. Knight-Captain Rylen will be your warden and in charge of your dosage. Work hard, work well, and you will not have to work for very long.”

“Piss on your even-handedness Commander. Allowing blood magic of any kind will lead to your ruin. Time will justify my actions and condemn yours. The Maker knows my heart, only He can judge me. And you will find in time He will judge you all. Are you sure you did the right thing Commander? Will you sleep well knowing you’ve allowed two blood mages to continue breathing? What will you tell yourself when abominations rip your precious Inquisitor apart? That ‘he was my friend’?”

“Silence!” His sharp tone brought his guards, he nodded to them and they escorted Celedona away, taking care to replace her gag.

“Good.” He sighed as the door to his office closed. “May I never meet her again in this life.”

A tiny, hesitant knock ended his little prayer for peace prematurely. “Enter.”

Cassandra was on the other side of the door. “How are you feeling?”

Anh Bao had to be dragged away, writhing against her guards still begging for Tranquility or death or any punishment that left her free of a Circle’s walls.

“Terrible.”

“You performed well. We are all proud of you. I’m not sure what I would have done had I been in your place.”

“Yes you are Cassandra. Anh Bao would have been put to the sword. Dorian would have been exiled to Tevinter in light of his service to us instead of meeting the same fate, and the templars–if not rewarded–would have been allowed to remain.”

“In the old world, the one we came from, yes you are right. But in this new one–my point stands…I do not know what I would have done. You managed to be fair, just, and merciful.”

“But was it right?”

“Time will tell.”

His sword hand flexed over his pommel, an old trick to conceal tremors. Cassandra noticed. “It has been a while since we’ve talked about your condition. How are you faring there?”

“Some days are easier than others. I thought I was done with the old life.”

“You are. Are you not?” Cassandra’s voice dropped, serious question hidden under a benign one.

“I am.” He defended. “I am glad to be done with it. The lyrium and everything else but. That night when Dorian tried his blood magic on Evelyn, I forgot myself. I tried to Silence him. I sang until I thought my throat would bleed and nothing happened. Afterwards I felt loss. Like some part of the Maker had left me.”

“A good deal of that is–.”

“The feeling of the lyrium, I know. But Seekers can operate without the substance, their abilities still work. Why not ours then?”

“Seekers and Templars are two arms on the same body. You know that.”

“Yes.”

Cassandra folded her arms, hard stare boring into her friend. “Seeker training methods applied to templar structure and ability might yield result. The effect could be two fold even. Seeker talents come slowly and at great cost. Perhaps with a templar’s help, the process could be economized, improved. Allow me time to contact my Seeker comrades, perhaps Lord Seeker Lucius will have an answer.”

Cullen smiled, “You’re a good friend Cassandra, I’m glad to have you.”

“I do this as much for me as for you Cullen. For too long the Seekers have been reclusive in their actions. In this new world of new Circles perhaps we can shine more light on our truths.”

**

Krem wasn’t exactly thrilled when the Iron Bull arrived at his door wearing a grin wider than the span of his horns. Less so when the chief produced the last bottle of maraas-lok in the keep, his shit eating grin only getting wider.

“What do I owe the pleasure Chief?”

“I need a reason to treat my favorite lieutenant to my favorite drink?”

“I’m your only lieutenant and yes, you do.”

Bull shrugged, brushing aside the implication of ulterior motive lurking under that smile one that grew into a grimace with every passing moment.

“This is about the ‘vint ain’t it?”

Bull’s grin drooped at the edges and wiped away.

Krem heaved a sigh, “Come in you bastard.”

The Iron Bull drank, giving Krem specific instructions to guarantee he never saw the bottom of his mug. Orders his lieutenant had no problem following.

“Is the blood magic eatin’ at you chief?”

He’d forgiven Dorian, he understood him, he still loved him but shit, blood magic wasn’t just something you get over with a coquettish smile and an angry fuck–both of which Dorian tried the night before.

Betrayal was a good word, and so was hurt. Confusion, anger, fear—all good words too.

“Every-damn-thing is.”

“Heart ache?”

“More like heartburn.” Bull laughed, drunkenly belching.

The Qun was very clear about mages, and though he parted ways with that old life, some things still just stuck to him, indelible, rooted to his bones—don’t fuck around with magic.

And  _really_  don’t fuck around with blood magic.

Nasty work, the stuff. He’d seen it pull a man’s insides out when he was hired with other groups of mercs to track down a cabal of blood mages somewhere in the Free Marches. He cut them down, every last one, even the ones who surrendered and begged. The Bull had a healthy respect for mages, and a healthier fear of blood mages. That he lay next to one for all this time, one that he trusted to the core of whatever soul he thought he had…

“He’s a ‘vint.” Krem answered.

Bull rolled his eyes, it did him no favors that his favorite (only) lieutenant and his lover hated each other. “You’re a ‘vint.”

“Yeah but he’s a magister.”

“Altus.”

“Whatever. In the end, they all go corrupt. Mad for whatever power they can snatch and lives they can own.”

“Dorian ain’t like that and you know it!”

“Then why are you here, Chief? Drinkin’ the last bottle of maraas-lok and no dead dragon to show for it?”

“I just…” Bull murmured into his glass.

He just needed a minute, a moment, some time to clear his head and order his thoughts—by scrambling them up as much as he could to see which one stuck to the wall the longest.

Drink after drink, pull after pull, the only thought in his mind that stuck better than the rest was not the fear in his heart upon seeing the whites of Dorian’s eyes fill with blood as he cast his magic; but the feeling in his chest when he pulled Dorian out of that cloud of Templar boots.

Madness.

Like he would, with bare hand, rip through armor and skin and bone to pull beating heart out of living chest.

Of friend and foe alike.

It was madness, its purest form, unchecked destruction.

Life with Dorian was frustrating and infuriating, the man was a walking talking mess of emotion and sarcasm and bluster and beauty.

But life without Dorian would be madness.

**

She had to lean on the chair to keep on her feet, favoring her right leg.

“Surprise.” She made a weak gesture.

Cullen mounted the steps to her room, glance flickering between the washtub and the table. There were three half melted candles lit on a stool by a full tub and the table held a plate with two rolls and half a pheasant to share.

Over by the chaise she’d set up a chessboard, and piled several books by the bed.

“What’s all this?”

She knelt by the tub like a woman twice her age with twice her malady, running a hand through the steaming water. “Since you wore the crown today, I thought you might get to reap a little of the benefits. And I want to thank you for wearing the crown today.”

“I didn’t wear it.”

“I heard Josephine at least thought about it.”

Cullen snorted before his face hardened. “You should be resting.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re limping like an old woman, you’re not well at all.”

“You know how you can help me then? Get in the damn tub Rutherford.”

He allowed her to help him bathe, or rather she forced him to relax while she hobbled about looking for a large enough shaving of soap. He did relax in earnest when she washed his hair, the slow circles she whorled in his scalp soothing his headache.

“So this is one of the perks of being Inquisitor?”

“I imagined this with far more candles…and food.” She answered dryly.

“I meant the beautiful woman waiting on me.”

“Oh,” burning heat flamed in her cheeks. “Well yeah I guess. Why? Wanna wear the crown more often? _My king_.”

Cullen made a pleased noise low in his throat. “While there is merit to the title, I think I’ll be fine with just.”

 _Husband_. He thought. “Commander.” He said.

“Oh? I kinda like the sound of ‘King Cullen–Lord of the Chess Pieces’.”

He flicked his hand under the water, splashing Evelyn. “Is that so, Queen Evelyn–Lady–? What would you be the queen of?”

“Your heart if you’d allow it.” She tossed him a wink and a grin to go along with the overly saccharine sentiment, yet he still blushed.

“Always.”

The fangs in her feral smile disappeared, morphed into something that curved with tender and genuine affection. Her eyes softened as did her voice. “You wore the crown well today, Cullen. That’s a fact.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“It never is. Harder still when you’re actually wearing the crown. That bitch is heavy.”

Cullen chuckled, endlessly amused by her swearing. “You have such a foul mouth you know.”

“You love it.”

He leaned forward in the tub, brushing his nose against hers. “I missed it.”

He took her missed mouth with an achingly sweet kiss, wet fingers at the back of her neck dripping tepid water under the  collar of her shirt and down her back.

“You’re getting me wet.” She mumbled against his lips, making no effort to pull away.

Cullen purred suggestively, swallowing her complaint and preventing her from making any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading.


	16. Animal Companions

She was too damn stubborn to remain in her room. Too Maker bleeding proud to conduct her war council meetings from the safety and comfort of her bed.

She was fine.

“I’m fine!” She brushed Cullen’s hand away from her waist as he tried to hold her without holding her, seeing all too well the tremor in her knees and legs. Weeks after the attack and there was something, something in her legs and her hands and, fuck, her  _mind_  that still hadn’t settled.

She couldn’t walk right.

Her shots veered too far to the left.

The elven children used to crowd around her begging her to ‘do the trick!’ one of the many phrases of Trade they were learning from Joseph. They’d toss random objects into the air, marked with the tiniest ‘x’, and for a payment of exactly one smile and one giggle she’s shoot whatever they threw. Her arms shook too much now, her bow clattered in her hands.

The children stopped coming, stopped asking her to ‘do the trick!’. Now all they said was ‘I’m sorry.’

Her mind suffered the worst of it, still trying to pull and tease apart the memories Anh Bao and Cullen left behind.

Funny, in that worst kind of humor, that her dreams left behind by two different people were the same. Tortured, hurt, and trapped in a Circle.

“I’m fine.” She repeated, softening her voice, trying to make him understand that she wasn’t angry with him but just angry. Angry at a world that permitted slaves and tranquil children, exploited templars and enslaved mages.

They were walking from somewhere to somewhere else, working together, trying move scant resources from here to there and fill all the gaps that desperately needed filling--food being highest on their list of concerns.

He relented, removing his hand from her waist. “As you say, Inquisitor.”

The wounds in his voice startled her, made her shaky feet shakier. She walked ahead of him, asserting her will on an uncooperative body. One that finally rebelled.

Her legs gave out.

And she fell, face first into the dirt, arms too slow to break her fall.

Evelyn didn’t fight him when he scooped her out of the dirt and carried her away.

Didn’t fight either when Rainier came to her a week later unannounced and not, curiously enough, looking to coax her out of her shame darkened quarters.

“A gift.” he said, words muffled by equal parts beard and embarrassment.

She pulled back the cloth on the long object in his hands to reveal a sturdy piece of carved wood.

“I heard your worship was having troubles, I thought to help.”

A cane, she realized belatedly, still caught in the carvings etched in the wood. The base was flat, perfectly flush when pressed against the floor but from there the wood turned into a menagerie.

A griffon stood proudly upon the base side by side with a large eyed and pretty doe. From there a dragon reared on its hind legs supporting a wry looking fox with a curiously curly thatch of fur upon its chest. A sleek and elegant cat perched on the fox’s head batting a buzzing bee. A droopy eared long legged rabbit sprouted from the bee’s back and a nug held a bull aloft in its paws. A snake curled and wended through the bull’s horns and from the unfurled hood of the snake the wood bent and curved to form the cane’s handle. A mabari and a lion, pressed nose to nose, smiles in their muzzles.

“I hope I haven’t presumed.” Rainier, alarmed by her silence, tried to apologize. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

She took the cane from him, the mabari and the lion fitting perfectly to her hand, as though molded from it and to it.

“What did you make this from?” She tested her weight against the cane, switching between her hands to find the most comfortable position.

“Oak.”

“Why?” She took a step, then another, cane clacking against the stone floor.

“Well oak is the sturdiest of the woods in the workshop and…”

“I meant why did you make this? Did Cullen put you up to this?”

Rainier grumbled. “No. He don’t talk to me much.”

He watched her walk, turn, and come back. Still shaky, but the cane eliminated the threat of falling on her ass for all to see.

Evelyn thumped the cane on the floor, then again, then one more time looking for a specific and memorable ‘sound’.

“Inquisitor?”

“It’s just B to you Rainier.”

“B then. Are you trying to break it?”

She thumped the cane again on the floor, smile tearing across her face like wildfire. “There! Grandmere had a cane, she used to beat it on the floor and it’d make a noise and Assan, she’d get this look on her face, and her ears would twitch and...what I’m trying to say is thank you Thom.”

Rainier bowed like a chevalier, something he’d never done when Blackwall was his name.

“I hadn’t been able to do much for you, to thank you. It’s not much but it’s something.”

“Consider us even.”

**

They didn’t remark on her cane, expressing only their joy that Evelyn returned. Exquisite timing even as she had a cane to support her when they cut the legs out from under her.

“There was an attack on one of our farms two days ago.” Cullen reported. “Apparently we aren’t the only ones suffering. That dragon, and poor weather has made the harvest season terrible for the locals. Bandits and hungry folk are stealing crops from the fields.”

“We gave them our surplus a year ago.” Josephine made a check on her writing board. “It seems they expect our generosity again.”

“Only we can’t afford it.” B answered. “We need every damned ear of corn we have left to feed ourselves and our soldiers.”

“Thoughts, Inquisitor?” Her Commander asked.

“Harvest season is here, we need every fucking kernel we can get for winter or people will die.”

“Yes.” Leliana agreed. “If we impose strict penalties for thieves…”

“No. We’re not that kind of Inquisition. Cullen.”

He nodded, understanding. “I will take my soldiers out into the Hinterlands. We’ll run regular patrols throughout the harvest season to deter future attacks.”

“That could go on for months!” Leliana made a distressing noise. “You’ll miss Satinalia and All Soul’s Day! The children are working on a passion play and...”

“Sister Nightingale.” The Ambassador put her clipboard down and approached her friend. “I have already cancelled All Soul’s Day, Harvest Moon, and Satinalia festivities.” Josie answered sheepishly. “We just don’t have it.”

Leliana hid a brokenhearted face under her hood, she was really looking forward to that play.

“Welp, I guess I don’t have to worry about presents this year then huh?” Evelyn joked, trying to lighten the atmosphere in the war room, —an ill-fitting name considering they were no

longer at open war with anyone. Rather Leliana and Josephine waged more battles now than the

Inquisitor and Cullen did, slinging rumor and threat the way they formerly slung arrow, magic, and

sword.

When no one laughed, Evelyn sighed, shifting the weight on her cane. “Cullen, prepare your troops, take what you can and what you need to keep your soldiers supplied through the season. We’ll need troops to watch the farms and the caravans that bring the food back to us. You have my leave to pursue any and all bandits, confiscate what you can from them, send it to us, and we’ll redistribute it to the rest of our army and keeps. We need scrounge and scrape if we’re to survive the winter.”

“It will be difficult. Our dependants and remaining allies are asking for what we cannot provide. More soldiers for protection, ores and supplies, our favors are extremely thin, Inquisitor.”

“And the soldiers grumble. Rylen hears talks of mutiny from garrisons out west.” The Commander moved a supply token across the War Table. “I’ve shunted what I can to keep them happy but it won’t last. Something will give. Us or them. I don’t know how long though.”

“One thing at a time Commander. Right now we need to focus on protecting our harvest. Leliana, what do your scouts report.”

“Popular opinion is that you consort with demons and conduct blood magic orgies. But nothing beyond that.”

Evelyn sighed, bending to rest her forearms on the War Table. “Anything else?”

No answer.

“Good. Maker’s fuck.”


	17. Missives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sticking through and sticking by:
> 
> Thanks :)

“I don’t like this.” Jim walked by, carrying tent poles, lashing them to one of the ox-driven carts carrying Cullen’s supplies.

B raised an eyebrow, lips curled in the barest hint of a smirk.

“And no that’s not why.”

Her gaze warmed, mischief and disbelief lighting up her eyes.

“It’s really not!” Cullen pressed.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I don’t like leaving the keep undefended. If word got out…if someone got it in their heads to attack. You’d be defenseless.”

“We’re not completely defenseless. I’ve got a Ben-Hassrath–former.” She ticked the names off on her fingers. “A dragon slaying Seeker, a companion to the Champion of Kirkwall, a Red Jenny, A Red Templar, a blood mage…”

The Commander conceded the point, “And what am I to do, your poor knight, all alone bereft of my lady’s company?”

Evelyn hummed thoughtfully. “You could write.”

Cullen snorted. “We’ll use a courier this time.”

August sun waxed heating the early morning as though it were midday. According to the schedule, he’d be gone for two months or more, the last of the crops harvested mid-Firstfall.

“Don’t fall in love with any milk maids.” She warned. “Or strapping young stable lads.“

A rare smirk pulled at the seam of the Commander’s scar. “As long as you promise not to fall for any young and handsome archers.”

“Look, we talked about this. He said he needed help with his form!” Fire blazed in her cheeks and her lips slanted in a crooked little pout.

“He was flirting with you. It was obvious.” Cullen mocked annoyance.

Evelyn thumped her cane, insistent. “He was not! He’s new. He just needed help!”

“Then why did he ask Dorian if you were taken?” Cullen folded his arms, still grinning, enjoying her flustered little blush.

Surprise widened in her eyes and Evelyn gasped. “Really?”

“Maker did you really not know?”

“I just thought he was just being nice. It’s hard to notice anyone else when you’re around.”

She heard his little strangled sigh before hands grabbed, reached, and pulled, the brass buttons on her tunic striking against his breastplate with a desperate click. “Maker Evelyn come with me.” He kissed her twice in quick succession–taking little gulps of love like air. Large hands caging her face, trapping her dazed smile in his vision. He would kiss her more but time did not permit such indulgences. If he didn’t have to leave, he’d never stop. “Come with me.” He asked again.

A horse whinnied somewhere, White Luck impatient to be off.

“I need to stay.”

She tipped her forehead against his. “Still not well.”

“Then send someone else, let me stay with you.”

“That’d,” she lifted her cane tapping him lightly on the nose, “Would be dereliction of duty.”

“No ma’am.” He answered in his soldier’s voice, eliciting shiver from her, warmth pooling in her belly–an ache that would remain long unsatisfied while he was gone. He thieved one more kiss, longer and sweeter, the last to last him. “Your knight would ask a boon.”

“Name it ser.”

“A token to carry of my lady’s favor. To keep me warm on the cold, lonely nights.”

She went fishing in the wrong place, sticking slender fingers under his breastplate to pull free a string of lion’s teeth. “Silly straw head, you’ve always carried it.”

**

Long.

Uneventful.

Boring.

The Commander groaned, sliding from his horse, feeling the bones in his back pop and realign after days of constant riding. They established their first camp at Holdfast, a tiny village in Ferelden. Too small and insignificant to merit the crown’s attention or protection during the war, Holdfast was one of the first territories claimed by the Inquisition.

Weary but sweet, the villagers were glad to have extra swords and extra eyes watching over them. Extra hands to work too. Oft times Cullen and his soldiers assisted the freeholders threshing barley and hay since their young and restless children disappeared en masse gone off in search of ill gotten riches. More than once he personally brought home a wayward child, dumping them on their doorsteps with minor scratches and a stern word or two.

He didn’t mind the fieldwork, a miller’s son by birth, but the work was hard and the days were hot finding him bare-chested and sweaty by the end of most of them. 

He had to beat back those stable maids and milk lads with a stick.

After two weeks in Holdfast, his company traveled on to the Crossroads and the farms they controlled there. Bandit activity increased the closer they approached the trade town, nothing really troublesome however, just the desperate and destitute looking for a way to keep full. He let them go, showed mercy, and even offered the more skilled warriors jobs within the Inquisition, sending them to Skyhold for further training.

_Dear Commander,_

_Stop sending me teenagers!_

_Love,_

_Me_

He read the letter in his tent, chuckling softly to himself, winding his fingers through the leather cord that secured the bone teeth around his neck.

He chewed on the end of his quill, thoughtfully choosing his reply.

_My Dear Inquisitor,_

_But I thought you liked them young?_

_Love,_

_-C_

**

_Commander_

_You’re right. I guess I’ll have to put the young ones through the paces. I have to find someway to keep occupied…and fit. I thank you for your consideration._

_Love,_

_Me_

**

_Inquisitor,_

_It is not wise to overtax your new recruits, you’ll tire them quickly, leaving you unsatisfied. I suggest moderation in your training, restraint. Then when the time is right, a real soldier will arrive, one with the experience and the stamina required to fulfill your particular needs. Until then, patience._

_Yours,_

_-C_

**

_Cullen,_

_We aren’t talking about training recruits anymore are we?_

_Love,_

_Me_

**

_Evelyn,_

_No. No we are not._

_Love,_

_-C_   
  


**

_To My Dearest Friend First Enchanter Molgwin of Ansburg Circle,_

_You have no idea how relieved I was to receive your letter. It is very hard to know who was lost during the war, and I am so glad the Maker saw you through the storm. We are re-establishing well here in Ostwick, the blood is nearly gone from the walls but it will be another month or two before we are on our feet again and ready to operate as we once did. Perhaps in the new year we’ll see new mages brought to our doors if there are any mages left._

_But what will we do once we re-open our doors? It seems that we mages have been given a choice, one we’ve never had before. I’ve heard the rumors about what is going on in Ferelden with Inquisitor Trevelyan. I know the woman’s father, good man, very respectable, very generous. It seems his daughter has inherited those same qualities. I’ve been in correspondence with Senior Enchanter Fiona as she calls herself now. Seems that they’ve established a new Circle at their stronghold and are letting the mages run it and outside of Chantry jurisdiction!_

_Can you imagine?_

_A mage run Circle?_

_I’m curious to hear your thoughts._

_Respectfully,_

_First Enchanter Wilhelmina, Ostwick Circle_

**

_–But where are your balls man? What did her death mean if we just go right back to place our necks under the Chantry’s boot? And don’t give me that excuse about consorting with blood magic! How many of us have dabbled in the taboo? How many of us practice blood magic ourselves when we take the phylactery to a child’s blood? Poor Orsino, he was backed into an impossible position by that raving Knight-Commander. How many of us would consider the same if it meant the lives our our charges? Inquisitor Trevelyan seems to be the only one who hasn’t forgotten about that war. Everyone got caught up in the demons and tears in the Veil and rightfully so, but now that’s over and we have a chance to build something new, something better. We have to stand with her! In Ansburg, we will._

_My deepest condolences on the loss of your dau–_

**

_Ambassador Montilyet,_

_With all due respect, the Crown of Ferelden does not have the funds nor the inclination to–_

**

_–Empress Celene is of course continually grateful for your assistance at the Winter Palace, but in light of your Inquisitor’s theft of the Empress’s Justice against the Traitor Thom Rainier, we must–_

**

_My Lady,_

_It appears Warden Theirin has no more love for me. When I wrote to him of your offer his reply was quick and short._

_‘No.’_

_I reminded him in follow up, that he would be discharged honorably from his service to the Grey Wardens and that the Lady Cousland would be warmly welcomed at court and treated with the respect due a Companion of the King. He responded thus._

_‘Dear Uncle Teagan,_

_HHAHAHAHAHAHAHA._

_HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA._

_N.O._

_Respectfully,_

_The Warden **S** Theirin’_

_Your position is secured but the issue of succession–_

**

~~_Alistair Theirin: Grey Warden. Heir to King Maric’s line. Sweet. Biddable._ ~~

_O: Fergus Cousland: Teryn of Highever. Sister to Issa Cousland who hates me utterly. Widowed by Howe. Martial. Distant. Dark. The banns will be reluctant to accept a mudskinned consort no matter the gender. Still keep this option open.–_

_._

_._

_.  
_

_\-- ord. South Reach. Peasant stock. Would be much higher on the list if not for that. Only one I haven’t met.–_

**

_–getting better. Yesterday was my first without the cane. That bastard Samson actually clapped. My leg is fine but there will be times when it just aches and there’s nothing I can do for it but chew on some elfroot and wait for the pain to pass. My bow’s sitting better in my hands, they don’t shake anymore, thank fuck, Dorian’s got me going through some staff forms to rebuild the strength in my arms. I should be shooting right soon. Nightmares are going away too.  
_

_It’s getting cooler, there’s an avvar chieftess that came by, Thane Elyn, she’s saying her augurs predicted a brutal winter. It’ll get cold up here first, but I hope you stay warm down there._

_I miss you so much. I can’t wait until–_

**

_–riding when we came upon bandits attacking a gilded carriage. We fought them off easy, no casualties, they actually ran as soon as we arrived. One of the guards called after me, telling me that the lady of the carriage wished to thank me. And you know me, I’m not too fond of the idea, I leave the nobles to you but it was proper so I agree._

_Lo and Behold that was no mere lady but the Queen of Ferelden! She seemed like a nice lady, very grateful for our assistance. She insisted on rewarding me and gave me a little scarf white and gold to go around my wrist like a knight’s token. But it’s far too long and too delicate, get’s caught on my greaves so I had to remove it. I actually don’t remember where I put it._

_I miss you too, my love. Desperately. I can feel the days getting cooler down here too. I’m normally not fond of winter but I do look forward to the snows. It means I can come home.–_

**

_To Senior Enchanter Fiona,_

_We, the Circle of Magi at Hossberg, were moved by your speech during your recent visit. After much deliberation we have decided to follow Circle Skyhold’s model and–_

**

_To Senior Enchanter Fiona,_

_Greetings old Friend. I was glad to hear from you, gladder still to see you. But you must forgive me as your association with the Whore of Skyhold means that I cannot treat with you as I’d like. This is Montsimmard. The home Circle of Divine Victoria, as intriguing as your proposition sounds, we cannot go against Her Radiance–no matter how much those of us may wish.–_

**

_To Senior Enchanger Fiona,_

_Antiva is with you, so long as your Skyhold can protect us from the Divine’s Wrath.–_

**

 _Grain: 2 months_  
Cured Meats: 2 months  
Vegetables: 2 weeks  
Elfroot and Medicines: Not enough  
Candles: Not enough  
Reserve Coin: Don’t even go there Josie…

**

_–I’m upset you missed All Soul’s Day and you were nearby too! Though I guess it’s alright, you’ve important Inquisition business to tend to! And you never really liked All Souls Day anyway. You always used to cry when Da would like the fires, screaming ‘stop hurting her, stop hurting the Lady!’ I bet you don’t remember that._

_Maybe you’ll visit for your birthday then, we can hold off on the Satinalia celebration for a week, what a present that would be hmm?_

_Rosie is still dour and Kiya delivered a beautiful baby boy in the spring. Richard is his name after Granda and as soon as he can wrap his little finger ‘round a pawn, we’re teaching him chess._

_Speaking of little fingers–_

**

_–know Dorian could play the lute! But he went and got it and started to play and the children sang with him and oh, Leliana loved it! You would have loved it! I wish you were here. I wish you didn’t miss this. Completely made up for not having any presents._

_  
Damnit Cullen, come home, now! Or I swear by the Maker I’m coming–_

**

_Nightingale,_

_It wasn’t easy but I got it. Stolen right from the desk of the Grand Sancta herself. You’ll want to read this._

_-Ombra_

_We, the Inner Sancta, do Desire by the Word of the Most Holy, that She declare the Lady Evelyn Trevelyan so called Herald of Andraste HERETIC and call forth upon her and her allies an Exalted March._

_To wipe her Sin from the Maker’s Earth and purge Thedas of her filth._

_Signed_

_Grand Sancta Beatrix_

_Sister Falise_

_Sister Mary Cl—_

_.._

_.._

_.._

_.._

_Mother Giselle_

_Divine Victoria I_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh! It's lit now!


	18. Andraste's Ashes

Leliana clutched the letter to her chest, praying a litany over and over for some kind of solace.

O Maker, hear my cry:

Guide us through the blackest nights

Guide us through the blackest nights

Guide us through the blackest nights

She clutched it, held onto it, kept the bomb to her chest for a little while longer. Heart too full to interrupt the scene below.

He returned, gifted by the Maker’s hand bundled not in Satinalia wrapping paper but in snow. With the weather, they expected him at least a week later but the horns blew announcing his arrival. Yet the cry for luck, blown from grateful lungs outstripped the bellow of the horns.

Leliana’s heart constricted, squeezed almost dry as she watched the Inquisitor burst from side doors running-- flying-- toward Skyhold’s gates.

She barreled into open arms, the pair falling into the snow to the delighted cheers of all.

Leliana turned her face away, allowing them this last moment of peace.

**

“You’re home! You’re really home!” There was snow down his back, snow down his front, snow possibly in his boots. But she was in his arms, her lips on his face so the cold would wait until he was ready to feel it. He felt her now.

“I am home.”

South Reach wasn’t home, he’d barely lived there before the Chantry called him. And Honnleath hadn’t been home for more than a decade. He had affection for those buildings, for his family’s windmill and the barn that smelled of sweet grass and the tiny pale flowers his mother loved.

But this.

Buried in 6 inches snow with an Inquisitor who could crack the world in half with her left hand, a hand that was sputtering and sparking pressed against his frozen cheeks as she pressed her lips to his, oh this was home. Warmer and sweeter than any hearth he’d known.

She heard the cry in her bones before her ears picked it up. Running with unconscious heart before conscious mind registered the thought. Cullen was home. She ran, ignoring the momentary flare of pain in her leg (the left one this time), eager to beat him to the gate. To crash into him, and hold a man she’d been aching months for. Flying through wooden doors and down snow covered stairs to see him standing, arms open, waiting. To know in the burning fluttering of her heart that he loved her as much as she loved him.

There was nothing like it. No feeling, no freedom better.

Maker’s love and all the stars in the heavens

That man made her fly.

Satisfied with her kisses for now, she let him up, pulling him out of the snow. “Debrief me on everything that happened later, let’s get you inside, I have wonderful news from Senior Enchanter Fiona.”

She tugged on his hand, lacing their fingers together, bubbling with excitement to share. Her Circle was working, the model spreading slowly to the rest. Montsimmard and White Spire resisted as was expected. But she hoped as those Circles became exception rather than rule their reluctance would erode away in the face of change’s tide.

Nightmares like what Anh Bao and Cullen went through would remain as haunted memory and distant reality, but never again living torment.

Finally, good news!

“Inquisitor, Commander.” Leliana appeared at the doorway to the Grand Hall, a snowy spectre, parchment crumpled to her chest, hands shivering from the bitter wind.

Or.

Something else.

**

To wipe her Sin from the Maker’s Earth and purge Thedas of her filth.

Signed

Divine Victoria I

She read it again

And again.

And again.

Each time, she thought she smelled smoke, the discomfiting scent of burning hair and roasting meat. Evelyn took a steadying breath, eerily calm in the face of her worst nightmare come to pass. She laughed, barking and harsh, cold and cruel. “I wonder then,” Idle voice distant in her musing. “Should we just start gathering the wood now?”

“Evelyn! Stop!” Leliana pyre’d herself, drawing a straight line from her forehead to her navel—the symbol Andrastians use to represent the pyre Andraste burned upon—an invocation, a ward against sinful and hurtful thoughts.

“What! It’d save you all a lot of trouble. Save others from a lot of death. I get to be a martyr. How lovely. Father always wanted at least one of his children to amount to something. Too bad my ashes will be worth more to him than I was.”

Cullen rejected this, everything about this he rebuked. Templars negate, restrict, and deny. Where a mage pulled the threads of the Fade, weaving them to suit purpose and need, templars made the works of the world immutable.

And now the world worked to remove her, but this he would never allow. She would remain whole as made by her Maker. His sword, every drop of blood in his body, every ounce of air in his chest, every speck of love in his heart guaranteed this immutable truth.

“No.”

Leliana, Josephine, Cullen, and Evelyn stood around the War Table, each coming to grips with the letter stolen from Val Royeaux. Cullen seized her by the shoulders, grip tight enough pinch uncomfortably. “You will not!”

“Fuck off Commander!” She shrugged out of his grip too wounded and afraid to accept even his comfort.

She saved the world.

She worked to change it.

And her reward: a slow and painful death.

“Evelyn please.” Leliana pleaded. “Are you so ready to just give up?”

“We can’t fight the Chantry! You all know that. If they want my head, no force we could muster, martial or otherwise, can stop them. It’s the Maker fucked Chantry we’ve already lost. My friend…”

The Inquisitor paused, raking nails down her scalp, scratching the skin the way Vivienne used to. Snatching and popping at her roots, tearing her hair, tutting always that beauty was pain and pain beauty.

“I gotta go see her. I’m going to Val Royeaux” Evelyn declared, voice barely forceful enough to push a feather, but it pushed the rest of them nearly off their feet.

“What!” Cullen.

“Que!” Josephine.

“Quoi?!” Leliana.

“Vivienne is my friend.”

“But the Divine…” Josephine started.

“I ain’t talking about the Maker fucked DIVINE, I’m talking about my friend Vivienne. She wanna burn me, I’ma make her look me in the eye and tell me herself. Besides, it was my word that put her ass on that Sunburst Throne, ‘bout time she’s reminded of it!”

Cullen paced, a wild animal caged. “You’re talking about walking into the serpent’s nest Evelyn!

“I know! Fuck me running I know! But we’ve got nothing, literally nothing, else to work with. It’s our last chance Commander! And it ain’t a suggestion. I’m going.”

“And how do you know she’ll just let you walk out?” Cullen roared back, unbowed by her tirade.

“I don’t.”

“And after everything she’s done, you would still trust her?”

“In all this, I’ve not heard one word directly from her lips to my ears. My friend may be still in there. Fuck, she may even need my help.

Cullen squared his shoulders and put the steel in his voice. “Inquisitor. I cannot.”

“Hold.” She held up a hand. “If Vivienne is in there, if there is any shred of friendship left between us, she’ll help us. She’ll get a better leash on her dogs and she’ll give us the funds we need to survive.”

“You are supposing so much on so little…how can you be sure she’ll help?” Josephine started.

With her magic, Anh Bao knocked loose what Cole tried to hide away. A memory of sorrow, of screaming. That memory came back in her dreams. One of lying in dirt, cold. A memory of silence broken apart by one woman’s wails.

“Because I remember dying and her’s was the voice that screamed the loudest for me back.”

**

She would leave for Val Royeaux within the fortnight, and she intended to go alone.

“No. I am going with you, this is not negotiable.” He cut his hand across the air, almost knocking over a lit candle off her desk.

“Except it is.”

“And if it’s a trap? If she is not the friend you once had and she intends to keep you as a prisoner? Then what? You never think these things through Evelyn!”

“Except that I have. And controlling for that possibility, going alone ensures that I am the only prisoner taken, as my life’s the one that ensures you keep yours. Also, with only me gone you get to swoop in like a hero in a fairy-tale, burn Val Royeaux to the ground, and pull me outta the smoking cinders. We can’t fight the Chantry whole, but I’m pretty sure we could fuck up Val Royeaux. ”

“Except this is not a fucking fairy-tale and they might torture you or worse before I can do all that.”

“Aww,” She clasped her hands together, fluttering her lashes at the Commander. A teasing snarl parted her lips, her tongue curling at the corner of her mouth. “So you’re saying you would burn Val Royeaux to the ground for me?”

Anger bubbled his blood, set his heart racing. This was his homecoming, he burned for this woman for months. Itched to hold her, to love her, fall asleep with her arms wrapped soothingly around his back. And she…

And she…!

“Evelyn Cecilia!” Hissed, urging her to see his reason.

Her neck cocked so hard to the side the bone popped and her hair swished; lips pressed into a pout she dared him right back. “Cullen Sta—“

He won the argument with a kiss that smoked at the edges where their lips parted. A kissed that burned so hot, her senses sizzled away, save his sensation, save his need.

He broke the kiss to breathe. “No.”

Before diving in again.

“No.”

And again

“No.”

And again.

“No.” His kisses punctuating the ends of his pleas.

He clawed at her and the nightclothes she wore, hoisting her up, bringing her legs to wrap around his waist. Cullen moved them together, determined and long strides crossing the room until he found the nearest straight surface to rest her against.

The wall.

His kisses stung with the nip of his teeth on her lips, tongue, cheek, ears, and neck. She peppered the quiet dark of her room with little escaped sighs of burning pleasure.

“Ah, ah, ahh.”

Nightgown rucked high, smalls pulled low, she was wet against him, hip sealed to hip. He kept kissing her, though, ignoring the wet heat of her seeping through his trousers and smalls.

“Not letting you go.”

“You,” She ground her hips against him, searching for more delicious friction. Strangling a frustrated yelp, he pinned her against the wall with his shoulders while he worked on freeing himself. “You always trusted me before. Trust me again. Ahhnn! Cullen!”

He fit home in a deep slide, taking breath and thought from her. He thrust within her harshly, ensuring she was well and truly brainless before continuing his argument.

“I trust,” He grunted when she shuddered around him, tightening against him, making his words mushy and mal-formed. “I trust you. Maker! Evelyn! You feel...so fucking good! Ah!”

He kept going, plunging in her hard enough to knock her head against the wall before she braced against the surface and pushed her hips forward meeting his stroke, bringing him as deep as he could go and vaulting her off the wall.

“Maker!”

“Fuck!”

Cullen grabbed and held onto her ass, staggering back to find the next suitable vertical surface. Together they crashed against her fancy new wardrobe upsetting her jewelry box and toilette. Unsatisfied, Cullen kept hunting, kept thrusting, kept kiss biting Evelyn, wrenching from her little pleasured screams that set all his nerves alight. He stumbled against her chaise, sitting his bare ass down upon it with a little ‘oof’ she swallowed with her mouth.

They kissed, still fighting with tongue, sucking lips, and teeth, resting and righting and adjusting themselves, Evelyn now holding the power of pacing.

“Then,” she rolled her hips, sighing as Cullen’s fingernails dug into her flesh. “Keep, thrusting…trusting!” She corrected quickly. “Fuck me do both!”

“I.” He slammed into her, raising his ass off the chaise. “Will not.” He punctuated his words with two more sharp thrusts that made her moans bright and loud, her pleasure at its highest. “Trust! Them!”

She placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back into the furniture. She raised her hips and ass with her knees dug into the cushions and fired back with several more hard slams against his hips, tightening herself as she forced down upon him, squeezing him near to completion, near to death.

“You. Will. Obey. Me. Rutherford!”

He bit her shoulder hard, staving off his eruption and hastening hers. She climaxed hard, body bent back, taken over and surprised by the white hot shock of the pleasure.

“Oh Maker! Maker! Cullen!”

Back in control, Cullen pushed deep into her, unable to carry on a coherent defense save repetitions of her name and how much he loved her. He buried his face in her chest and shoulder, licking her sweat slicked skin, running his tongue over the softness of her breasts. His last moments before oblivion he savored her, held her close, tried to explain where his words failed him, why he just couldn’t allow her to enter that poisoned city alone.

“Evelyn, please, Maker. Love—ou so much. Ah. Ah! Evelyn!”

His cries broke apart as he did, flooding her with his passion, emptying himself until he was spent in body and breath. They panted, forehead to forehead, her room an utter mess.

“Okay Rutherford, you can come.”

“A little late for that love.”

She reached for a chaise pillow and tried to smother him.


	19. Mudskins in Val Royeaux

She did not enjoy having to leave Jackson behind, her white hart unsuited to slipping into the Orlesian capital city undetected. Nor did she enjoy Cullen’s crowing when they had to take his plain old Ferelden courser, White Luck instead.

“A proper mount for a proper knight.” He shot her a triumphant grin, patting White Luck affectionately on the neck.

They rode for Val Royeaux avoiding main roads and other travelers, sticking to the wilderness in favor of its anonymity.

“A hunter’s senses notice little things da’len.” Assan rasped in her ears as they rode. “Even when you track no game. You notice a man’s slight limp the same way you notice a deer’s, knowing just where to loose your arrow.”

He was safe from her arrows assuredly but she noticed his little things, uncovered now that they were away from Skyhold’s regular demands. His smiles folded lines in the corners of his eyes. His laughter barked when it was unguarded and loosed unrestrained, so Ferelden it hurt.

As he slept, her nestled against his back, she traced the patterns in his freckled skin–constellations guiding her home to his heart, praying for more time to number the all stars in his flesh. He snored as he slumbered, rolling over with a sleepy chuckle when she poked him in ticklish ribs.

“Sorry.” He mumbled, smiles in his eyes as he closed them falling back into immediate, deep, and restful sleep.

She pressed her lips to the corner of his eyes where the wrinkles softened, wishing she could eat them, these little things, all the bread her heart would ever need.

She supped on his carefree laughter and sipped on his burdenless smiles. She grew full just watching him, glutting on his little things, like his idle humming that vibrated in her chest as they sat two to his saddle not far from Val Royeaux’s gates.

Being brave did not mean being fearless. Josephine remarked on her bravery before they departed, willing to confront the Iron Lady in her home, even in the face of such dire threat. Yet her bravery did not preclude her from trembling as the trees gave way to homesteads, in turn giving way to walls and gilded buildings.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing by yourself.” She almost caught him once as she entered their berth on the ship, arms full of food from the galley. He had his head in his hands, words straining with sickness and he stopped as soon as he heard her. “Mother Giselle, before she left with Vivienne, would remark about your voice all the time when she caught you at your evening prayers.”

She heard Cullen’s cough behind her, felt his arm shift no doubt brought behind his neck to rub it. He blushed with color, unlike her, but he still had his tells as much as she did. She didn’t need eyes on him to know what color red the tips of his ears were turning.

“I’m honestly not that good.”

“Can I judge maybe?” He heard the hope in her eager question, saddened that his embarrassed reluctance won out.

“Oh no, maybe another time.”

Evelyn pouted with a mournful little hum in the bottom of her throat, sighing, leaning back in the saddle to rest against his chest.

“When I was little, Assan smoked a lot. Her voice was terrible, dry and scratchy like crunching on dead leaves in the forest. And my mother, well you can already guess she was never the type to sing to me or any of her children. I remember, though, when you pulled me outta the ice after Haven was destroyed. You all started to sing because we survived something we didn’t think we would. But when you started to sing… And this was before we’d ever said anything to each other about….I thought, with the way you…I kinda wanted to think…”

“That I was singing to you?”

“Yeah. It was comforting after everything that happened. These first few days were nice, peaceful. Excepting maybe the boat trip. But Val Royeaux isn’t far now and I have to remember these days are the exception and not the rule, that we’ll have to go back to face life and death and all that extra shit in between. I thought maybe if I heard you again, I…I wouldn’t be afraid.”

Mother Giselle had started the song to comfort the shocked and shivering survivors. Leliana and Cassandra joined her, then her scouts, then some of his soldiers. He remembered watching her, standing there, arms pulled tight around herself–nervous and unsure. Almost like she hadn’t just faced down a sentient darkspawn and his archdemon alone and survived. As though she hadn’t just saved every life there by bringing down a mountain.

She almost died.

And he remembered the  _relief_  that washed over his soul when she didn’t. His heart ached, a soft and sweet stinging, like feeling returning to something long numbed.

_Joy._

So much of it surging through him so quickly he could do nothing else but open his mouth and his heart and reach for her.

“You thought I was singing to you, well…I was.” He admitted softly.

“Oh damnit Rutherford!”

Cullen chuckled, bending to kiss the side of her temple where the edges of her hair, curly, thick and dark, met the rest of her.

He started as whispers–thready and tuneless.

_The night is long_

But in hearing her hitched breath then her soft, warming sigh, the kind that lingered in him, made his skin and his fingertips tingle in its wake—he grew more confident.

_And the path is dark_

He put his breath behind it, made the words vibrate before releasing them. Her chest, her heart, filled with an indescribable kind of warmth, like his voice was burning her with no pain, a sweet fire in her body that consumed her but left her whole.

_Look to the sky_

He cooled his voice, bringing the volume back down to an intimate whisper breathed against the shell of her ear.

_For one day soon,  
The dawn will come_

White Luck seemed to clop his hooves harder into the dirt, a way for the animal to show his appreciation.

Evelyn made a little plaintive noise. She wanted to twist in the saddle to face him, bury her face in his neck and ride like that the rest of the way to Val Royeaux.

The buildings thickened, grew denser the closer they got to the Orlesian capital. Twilight burned the last of its light, giving way to the greys and deep blues of a winter’s evening.

“I wish…” Evelyn started, a wish for plain and ordinary hovering on her tongue. That they weren’t coming to Val Royeaux to possibly fall into a trap or beg for salvation at the feet of an ungrateful Divine. She wished he was a travelling bard and she his companion, singing for their supper every night, kept warm by love and thin blankets.

“Cullen…I…” Her feelings broke off unrealized when she spied a figure on the road. “Someone ahead.”

It was just another road weary traveller like them, come to Val Royeaux to rest for the night. However, they remembered their need for caution.

“We’re too close to the city now.” Cullen whispered into her hair. He pulled the hood of her travelling cloak up, concealing her long vines from view, tender hand tucking in errant tips. “You can’t be recognized.”

She swiveled to face him as White Luck slowed into an ambling canter. She took fingers to his hair, now twisting into its natural slight curl after days on the road with no pomade to tame it. “You too straw head.” She reached for his cloak and kissed his nose as she drew it over his head. “They know you ‘Lion of Ferelden’ as much as they know me. Your name,” she thought with a heavy sigh. “Is nicer though.”

**

She held onto White Luck’s reins as they walked through the city gates. “Follow my lead. We’ll stable White Luck and see about getting into the Sunburst Palace. Don’t say anything. If they’re lookin’ for us, you might give us away.”

“Me?” Cullen frowned, indignant flush coloring his cheeks.

“Yes you. You’ve had a permanent scowl on your face since walking into the city. You’re so Ferelden it hurts.”

“Or it might have something to do with us about to walk into the darkspawn’s den.”

“Whatever the reason, stay behind me, and let me talk.”

“Travelers!” An innkeeper waved them over. Cullen hissed and pulled at her wrist to stop her from engaging him, but she twisted out of his reach giving him a smirk and a wink that defied his objections. The Commander swallowed his groan and followed after.

“Salut Ser!” Evelyn called, lightening her voice and flavoring it with an Orlesian accent.

“My compan’ion and I are ‘ere from long travels.” She rolled the ‘r’, approaching the man with a bright smile.

Cullen pulled White Luck forward, smiling thinly, inborn contempt for Orlais bleeding onto his features.

Though on alert, Cullen had to hide a snort in the back of his hand. She had two voices, his lady, the princess and the huntress, employed at different times for different situations. The princess was for when she needed to be about her business, cold and austere, professional. When she hosted salons with Josephine or discussed the garrisons with Knight Captain Rylen, the princess made them all remember just who was in charge. Who could eviscerate you with forked tongue and turn of phrase or lay down orders as firm and demanding as the voice that ordered it.

She used it when she meant to be naughty. Commanding him with an imperious eye to match her tone or moaning for more with sweet cultured swears. There was nothing quite like having a princess begging to be defiled by her Ferelden brute.

The huntress was her twang. Where contractions and slang made up the majority of her words. When she laughed and joked, she drawled with it. It came out when she teased him and it definitely came out when she drank. This was the voice he knew her from, her language he learned first—before he was aware there was more than one, and he loved both.

She used the princess now, to deceive the innkeeper, thickening it up with her command of Orlesian to lend credence to the deception. But the huntress lurked just under that thick accent and thicker smile, with a dagger hidden up her sleeve to strike should the need arise.

“We are searching for a cheap but warm place to rest for ze night. Would you be kind enough to offer a suggestion?”

“Of course mademoiselle!” Evelyn and the inn-keep negotiated terms and payment trading back and forth in Orlseian so thick and rapid it made him dizzy. She pressed a few sovereigns into his glove and bid him farewell.

“See? Easy.”

“You are infuriatingly wonderful you know?”

**

Even with keeping to alleyways and shadows, the pair had to pass through the Grand Baazar on their way to the Sunburst Palace. Early twilight and the market was still busy, stuffed with shoppers, city guards, and new Templars–the heraldry of the Order emblazoned on their chests; black sword angled down to strike a merciful blow, black flames emanating from the blade.

“She wastes no time I see.” Cullen mumbled. “Establishing her power. Evelyn, if we have to…Evelyn?”

She wasn’t listening, hadn’t heard him, focused on a notice board some feet away. She snatched the paper from the board, trying to crumple it before Cullen could read.

“What?”

“It’s nothing!” She pulled the paper away from his hands.

“Evelyn, please. We don’t have time. What is it?” He opened his hand and she crushed the paper into it, turning from his face.

He smoothed it open and the image inside made him crush it closed so quickly  his metal gauntlets ripped through the paper.

The artist had talent, shame it was wasted on this. Her lips and nose were widened to comical proportions, as were her breasts and buttocks. If it weren’t for the rays of light emanating from the left hand he wouldn’t know it was her. They made her skin black, not brown, but black, the whites of her eyes and wide red lips stretched over buckteeth were the only bits of color on her body. They made her hair out of snakes and fixed her face in a menacing grin, topped with a title written in bold black letters.

“Our Inquisitor: The Mudskin Whore of Skyhold”

“Maker’s breath. Evelyn…”

There was another hidden behind it. Same gross caricature, same title. She ripped it down.

To reveal another.

And another.

Nailed up one on top of the other. One for every month it seemed like. A new cartoon to entertain the citizens of Val Royeaux.

She ripped them all down, heedless of her original purpose, carrying the bundle to the closest brazier and dropping them all in.

There was another notice board, spied from across the market, right behind a puppet stall where children and adults had gathered to watch the latest play. She stormed toward it, leaving Cullen behind, ignoring his agitated hisses for her to stop and come back.

The crowd laughed as she passed, the puppeteers imitating the shrieks of a monkey to the delighted cheers of all. Evelyn glanced up, and stopped.

The puppet wasn’t a monkey.

Apparently the cartoons were so popular, the local toysmiths had made puppets out of them. She saw her face, her hair, and her body attached to puppet strings contorted in all kinds of lewd gestures and positions.

And the crowd just laughed.

Though some didn’t.  A pair of children.  One was an older boy, a teenager, his brown hand holding the slim brown hand of his little sister or cousin or friend, the crumpled remnant of one those cartoons fisted in her little hand.

They didn’t laugh.

The personal insults, the epithets she could bear.  Those old barbs don’t poison anymore, she was used to them. Living in Ostwick, being who she was and what she was, being called a ‘mudskin’ was de riguer. Ordinary and expected, even for the daughter of the second wealthiest land owner in the city.

It didn’t matter that she was the Inquisitor, that she saved Thedas.

With her defiance of the Chantry and her permission of blood magic, she made herself an enemy, set herself up in opposition. The hate for her was strongest here in the seat of the Divine’s power.

This made sense.

It made sense! She reasoned.

But there was another puppet, hooting and hollering and shrieking across the stage from her own.

Thinner.

Taller.

Darker.

Wearing the red and white cassock of the Divine rucked up to her hips.

The two puppets chittered to each other in their monkey language, the crowd laughed again, stinging like blades in the flesh.

She grit her teeth and kept walking, beyond the puppet stall and beyond the notice board. The desire to set flame to both boiling in her. Rage sang in her blood, igniting it, made her teeth click and her hands shake. From the market back into the darkening alleyways she fled, the spires of the Sunburst Palace looming closer.

“Evelyn.” He called to her back. “Stop.”

“No. We came here to do a job.”

He was at an utter loss, floundering for some kind of understanding, some kind of action he could do to take this pain from her. He saw only pieces of her pain at Halamshiral, the sneers and the stares and the compliments that didn’t quiet fit. This was their trip to the South Reach, when Rosalie shamed them all with her outburst. This was sharper, clearer relief. The intent plain and devastating.

“That can wait for just a moment, we can talk. Talk to me please. Let me help you.”

“You can’t help and I don’t wanna talk.”

“B please.”

“I said I don’t wanna talk cor-!…Cullen. I don’t wanna talk,  _Cullen_.”

It was there, on her tongue waiting to be flicked like a bullwhip. A strike to lash against something anything, he the closest and easiest target.

He heard the slip. “Evelyn?”

She finally stopped, caught in some narrow alley, yards away from their goal. Evelyn turned to him, shame writ large on her features.

“I am so…Cullen forgive me, please.”

“For what? Tell me? Why are you apologizing to me?”

“My grandmere, my grandmother–if growing up different in Ostwick was difficult for me, it was _brutal_ for her. Being rich only goes so far and the situation improves only barely as the years go on. My grandmere taught me a word to use when people like you act that way towards people like me.”

“Like in the market?”

“Yes. I almost. Fuck me.” She sighed. “Corpseface. I don’t say it. I think it sometimes. But using it doesn’t make me feel better, its just…so at least I ain’t gettin’ hit for free. And I almost called you that because I couldn’t march in there and set that whole Maker fucked stall on fire.”

He took no insult to the word, if not for the haunted expression in her face he would have found it funny. Corpseface, how could something so absurd sounding hurt him? “At least,” He searched for something to say, something to ease her heart and her anger. “It’s not as bad as it would be if you were an elf or a qunari.”

Evelyn’s face snapped and broke, changing from penitence to a snarl before flattening into expressionless rage. “This isn’t a fucking competition, Cullen. This isn’t about who has it worse. We ain’t talking about elves or qunari–and trust me I spent a lot of time with both,  _I know_. But right now we’re talking about what I saw in that market.  _They_  weren’t talking about elves or qunari, they were talking about  _people like me_!”

Cullen took a half step back, realizing belatedly he’d said something hurtful without understanding why. “Evelyn, I don’t understand any of this. I’ve never seen this before.  It’s not like that down here.”

“Apparently it is.”

“No, I mean like how it is where you’re from…”

“Apparently.” She repeated, pointing back toward the market. “It is. Listen. I don’t expect you to understand and how could you? You’re the standard, the ruler to which everything else is measured. And no matter what Iron Bull, Sera, Solas, Krem, Vivienne, or myself can do, no matter how rich we are, what good we do,  we will  _always_ be found wanting.”

“Is that really my fault?”

 

Evelyn shook her head. “No. But you benefit from it. And you need to understand– Don’t move.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deliberate and appropriate. Art imitating life.  
> Wanna talk about it leave a comment or hit me up at mirabai0821.tumblr.com


	20. Mudskins in Val Royeaux pt 2

They traveled light, wearing leather and heavy weave cloth--battle armor drew too much attention--made them stand out. Cullen abandoned his red surcoat and she her pale grey leather duster, too personal of signatures for a mission requiring stealth. Their assailant approached slowly, hood drawn over the face to conceal identifying features but the broad chest and shoulders alluded to a male. 

* * *

 

The figure  approached slowly, hands reaching for Cullen to take him unawares. Spotted, he lunged, grabbing one of Cullen’s wrists and wrapping an arm around his neck, pressing a dagger into his back before Cullen could draw sword and whirl to attack.

Cullen grunted and kicked his foot back, aiming for the knees but this assailant was well trained, he kept his knees bent and out of the way of Cullen’s strike.

They scuffled and struggled, Cullen fighting to free himself, twisting in his attacker’s grip, clawing at the arm across his neck.

“Be still!”

The assailant pressed the dagger harder into Cullen’s back and wrenched on his neck, bending his body forward, curving it like a bow.

“Cullen!” No good at close quarters, she still moved forward to aid him slipping her own dagger free from the hidden space up her arm.

“Do not move Inquisitor!” The attacker hissed, moving his weapon to just under Cullen’s ribs, intent deadly in the angle.

She froze, his life would end with a dagger in his heart before she could get close enough to save him.

So she drew her bow and nocked an arrow, intending to save him from a distance.

“Evelyn! Run!” He strangled against the metal greave biting in his neck, squirming in the man’s grip. The assassin was a templar, he could smell the sickeningly sweet lyrium on him. “He’s a Templar Evelyn! For the Maker’s sake run, please!”

Gravely, she shook her head. “If that fucker wants me, he’s gonna have to let you go.” She pulled on her arrow, aiming. “You know who I am?”

The attacker wore a cloth hood, the slit for sight cut length wise temple to temple. He nodded. She aimed.

“I don’t wish either of you harm.” His voice muffled in the cotton. “But I had to make sure your intentions were safe. But the bow down.”

“Let him go and we’ll talk.”

“Drop your weapon madam.”

He begged her, begged her with eyes widen by sheer panic, not for the blade pressed too near his heart but for the blades he knew were coming for her every moment she delayed.

“Evelyn! It’s a trap. I’m begging you GO! Run before they surround--!”

The templar pressed the blade against his rib drawing a bead of blood. “Silence Ser!”

That stubborn, obstinate, reckless, beautiful, infuriating, woman smiled at him. “Not a chance.”

Loosed arrow hissed against cloth, tearing a long gash in the fabric of the man’s hood.

The templar assassin startled, screaming and reaching for his face, the wake of the arrow so sharp he wasn’t yet sure if he still owned both eyes.

A hair to the left and the arrow would have fit through the slit and struck his eye.

Two hairs and it would have struck Cullen’s eye.

Cullen took advantage of the templar’s distraction striking the man in the face with his elbow, knocking his vision crooked. His dagger strikes were clumsy, his lack of skill with the blade apparent, this was a man who fought with sword and shield, no good for shadows and short blades. One final withering blow knocked him off his feet, dagger skittering away in the dirt.

B and Cullen fell upon him immediately, her knee at his neck, her dagger pressed against vital artery and his foot on the enemy’s chest.

“Who the fuck are you?!”

“Peace madam!”

Weaponless, the Templar made a placating gesture with his hands, reinforcing it with a verbal surrender swallowed by the muffling fabric. The Templar, struggling under the foot on his chest, removed his hood revealing a dark skinned man with a serious gaze set into deep copper eyes. “I only wished to talk.” He repeated. “You are not without friends here. Let me up madam. And be quick. We waste time.”

“Gimmie a reason, and make it good.”

“Like you, madam, I too wish to see that infernal stall burned to ashes. You cannot imagine the horrid things they say about you and the Divine --all of it undeserved.”

B relented, allowing him to sit up but still kept her dagger within shaving distance. “Who. The fuck. Are you.” She repeated. No princess now, all huntress.

He laughed as he sat up from the ground. “She told me you’d try to hide yourself but that your vulgarity would give you away.”

Cullen took his sword and seized the man’s collar. “Start speaking, now!” He growled.

“Calm yourself Commander Rutherford, despite my actions, I mean you no harm. My name is Ser Delrin Barris, Knight Vigilant of the restored Templar Order and Left Hand of the Divine. Her Holiness is expecting you Inquisitor, and I am to take you to her.”

**

Cullen stepped in front of the Inquisitor, shielding her, before she stepped right out from behind him, glaring at both men.

“Am I to be taken in chains then?”

“Maker’s breath no, but I’d ask that you both keep your hoods up. The walls have eyes.”

“Why should we trust you after that display?”

“I do not ask for your trust, merely I am here to carry out Her Radiance’s wishes. Save your trust for her.”

He led them through the alleyways of the city, eschewing well-traveled boulevards in favor of the darker, narrower roads.

Ser Barris offered no further explanation save that they be quick and follow him down into a sewer grate. From below he offered his hand to the lady, she took it but pulled harshly.

“I want your word Ser, sworn on the Blade of Mercy on your chest that if anything happens to me, he will be spared.”

“Evelyn!”

Ser Barris smiled, the warmth of it evident even in the dark. “The Divine always spoke very highly of you, of your loyalty to those precious to you.“ His gaze passed between the Commander and the Inquisitor, a look of longing also very evident in the dark. “I see her compliments are well earned. On my honor as a Knight, I swear nothing will happen to either of you. Her Eminence merely wishes to speak with you, and given current climates, such a meeting would have to be secret. I have been watching the city for weeks. The display at the notice board alerted me to you. I followed and listened. There are no ambushes lying in wait for either of you, and after you have conducted your business, my lady will bid you both safe passage back home.”

It didn’t satisfy either of them, but Vivienne preferred subterfuge and dissembling, never outright lies. Yet who knew what changes gilded robes wrought?

She took Ser Barris’s hand and climbed down into the sewer.

**

Underground, Cullen tensed, the closed spaces and the filth unnerving him.

“How far Ser Barris?” Evelyn barked, lacing her fingers between Cullen’s and gripping tightly.

“I’m here.” She whispered. “You’re safe.”

He relaxed only slightly giving a quick squeeze in thanks.

“We need to travel yet a while to reach the Sunburst Palace, then a secret passage will take us to her private rooms.”

She heard Cullen grunt and in the low torchlight saw his grit teeth.

“Knight Vigilant, that’s a rank I ain’t heard. I am curious what did you do to survive the war?”

“I survived the corruption at Therinfal Redoubt. I escaped as my brothers and sisters devolved into madness. I do not know how exactly I made it out whole, taking it as a sign of the Maker that He still had a purpose for me. I…”

Ser Barris paused, licking his lips. “I wandered for a time. I used my skills as a knight to earn money for bread and shelter and…” He let the sentence end before properly finishing it.

All three knew what word went there.

Lyrium.

Cullen could smell it on the man, he glowed with it. Here in the foul, heavy air of the sewer, Ser Barris smelled sweet, too sweet, a pot of boiling sugar just about to burn.

But Evelyn kept him talking, a distraction from her Commander’s discomfort.

“And?”

“And after, when I heard of the ascension of the mage Divine and the re-institution of the new Order, I came to pledge my service. The Most Holy saw some use of me, I was promoted.”

“And you’ve no trouble with a mage Divine, templar as you are?”

“I have no place to gainsay the Maker’s choice. She is His Choice as I am Her’s. Her Will, my hands.”

Evelyn heard a tender undercurrent in the words, Ser Barris spoke of Vivienne with a bit of fondness…wistfulness.

“Here.” Ser Barris stopped at an archway that looked like a door that had been bricked up long ago. He pressed a stone and the bricks receded, hidden passage and stairs revealed.

“Up this way.”

The staircase was even tighter, allowing only one abreast and even then not giving much room for that one. Ser Barris kept silent, so the only audible sound was the woosh of the torch and the Commander’s labored breathing. He followed directly behind Ser Barris, the lingering scent of lyrium overpowering.

Ask him for a taste.

He’s a templar, like you, he’ll understand.

_Ask._

_Just ask._

_It won’t hurt to ask._

_You don’t need it._

_You just want to ask._

_Go ahead Commander._

_Go ahead._

“Go ahead.”

Cullen shoved Ser Barris unkindly out of his way to emerge into a room that had more gilding than actual mortared wall. The moldings were made of gold, the fittings on every door and piece of furniture were made of gold. If the room burned, the puddles of molten metal would outnumber the piles of ash.

“Darling. You’re here!”

It was unnecessary to wear the red and white cassock of Divinity here in her private chambers, so she stuck to old familiars. Mage robes of black, white and silver, bodice straps crisscrossing under her neck and waist cinched so tight by her corset it made Evelyn dizzy as though her breath was the one restricted.

Looking at her; eyes, hair, and smile all the same, Evelyn could not tell if this was Vivienne or Divine Victoria she stared at. Even when the older woman greeted her with a warm hug Evelyn did not return, she still kept her guard up. After all, Vivienne herself taught her that the Game is always and ever played, even when she thought it wasn’t.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“You’d have to be an old friend.”

Free of the tight oppression of the sewer and the staircase, Cullen took several deep breaths almost gasping for the cooler, easier air, free from the stench of refuse and lyrium.

He would never have a smile for Vivienne and he was eased that Evelyn kept her distance as well.

Vivienne’s smile did not slacken, nor did her eyes shimmer in the way that signaled her displeasure. She implored her guests to sit and asked Ser Barris to fetch tea.

“No tea.” Evelyn cut through her hospitality. “How did you know we’d be coming? And how’d you know we’d want to see you.”

Vivienne tutted. “Come now, if your Spymaster has her little crows in my retinue, what makes you think I, the Divine, don’t have mine?”

Cullen made a noise of anger, shifting in his seat, ready to fly out of it. Ser Barris, seated opposite, leaned forward, ready to offer answering challenge.

“Vivienne.” Evelyn started.

Ser Barris coughed. “Inquisitor, you will address my Lady as Divine Victoria, Most Holy, Her Eminence, or Her Radiance, as is befitting her station.”

“Bitch!” Evelyn snarled, temper wholly taking her over. Still burning in her fury from the bazaar. “I’ve known her longer than you’ve had your fucking job. She want me to call her Most Holy, she better correct me herself!”

“Evelyn, darling, please. Ser Barris is the most loyal of any of my allies. And that he is my ally means he is also yours. But he is a Templar and the Left Hand besides. You will excuse him, he’s only does for me what others would do for you.”

Vivienne cut her eyes at Cullen, offering the Commander the tiniest of frosty smiles. “Come now, we’ve been parted for some time. How have you been?”

Silence. Evelyn rustled in her pack. Ser Barris sat ill-at-ease watching her hands in case they moved to a sharper implement than the parchment she pulled out.

The Inquisitor handed the Proclamation to the Divine.

“Oh dear.”

“That’s all you have to say? Your signature on a Proclamation of an Exalted. March. Against. Me and you say ‘oh fucking dear’? Vivienne…”

She ground her teeth together, batch and forth, molars pressed to molars rolling her jaw to press incisor to incisor. The tears held for now.

“What happened to always being my trusted friend?”

Vivienne gifted Evelyn one of her true smiles, the ones that melted the ice in her voice and softened the hard lines of her cheekbones.

“My dear, I have always and ever been your friend. But you and I both know very well, that true friendship in these times is difficult if not impossible to find.”

They sing when a new Divine is elected. Each of member of the Grand Consensus intoning the chosen name as if it were a verse in the Chant. The election must be unanimous, no discordant voice. And silence rang through the hall when her name was sung.

Silence.

Then jeering.

“I knew my election would be fraught with with unpopular opinion, after all, I am a mage. The accusations of apostasy, blood magic, and consorting with demons arose overnight, enhanced by my coloring. ‘Oh look,’” Vivienne mocked, clasping her hands together changing her voice into the nasaly whines of the nobility.  “’A Black Divine, well of course she’s an abomination, look at her.’ Within a week of my Ascension, two sects of dissenters were dead at my feet, preferring open conflict than cooperation with a mudskinned mage. Two strikes levied against me for nothing more than the happy accident of my birth.”

A shark in a sea of sharks cannot bleed. Ser Barris was chosen to be in her honor guard, Vivienne recognizing his piety, and devotion; his incorruptibility and his strong shield arm. He turned the blades meant to bleed her, found them before they struck. He was promoted to Left Hand almost immediately.

“My obvious enemies lay dead at my feet while the rest went to ground, plotting and scheming to be rid of me. I plotted and schemed right back. And this.” She held up the Proclamation. “Is the fruit born of months of investigations and suspicions. The harridans of the Sancta have been clamoring for a March against you since I came here. And anyone who would sign their name to this, is not someone I want in my Sancta. Barris, wine please.”

Her templar stood and returned with a decanter and four glasses. Only the women drank.

After a long, contemplative gulp, Evelyn asked. “What does this mean then?”

“My dear, all the names on this list I mean to purge save Mother Giselle--her name added to of course lend some kind of veracity to the document.”

Ser Barris hummed grimly.

“Purge?” Evelyn shivered, disarmed by the casual mention of murder.

“Yes darling, purge.” Vivienne took a sip of the bitter Orlesian red that glowed in the firelight, looking less like wine and more like another red liquid.

Evelyn coughed, choking on a bit of wine as a thought rocked her. “This...You were protecting me. You meant for me to have this, didn’t you? You knew I’d come.”

Vivienne tilted her head acknowledging the point. “I did. I cannot reach out to you directly just yet. Just as you are watched so am I. It is a risk for us both to be here, but I needed you to come so I could tell you eye to eye that the Sunburst Throne was never against you. This Proclamation is their death warrant, never _ever_ yours.”

“And my Circle, the one that circumvents Chantry law? How permissive is the Sunburst Throne with that?”

“Ah yes, I hear your model is taking off all over Thedas.” Vivienne smiled into her glass.

Evelyn blinked, her tone was warm, not wry or rueful at all. Jovial.

“You’re not upset? I am directly...” She stopped mid thought, Vivienne’s expression never changed. She still sipped her wine, she still smiled.

“You’re happy?”

Vivienne continued to sip her wine. Her smile growing wider by the moment.

Evelyn jumped up, scraping the furniture against the floor.

“YOU…YOU PLANNED THIS TOO!”

Vivienne still sipped her wine until the glass was dry.

“You knew, what I’d do! You’d been planting that seed since… You and I always discussed what we’d do about Circles and we always fought about it, always. And you knew when I heard you were bringing Circles back, you knew I’d use all my power to flout the decision as best I could because you knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want.”

Delrin and Cullen exchanged puzzled looks, scared—also possibly awed.

“Go on dear.” Vivienne encouraged, still smiling over the lip of her wine glass.

“And you knew that whatever I came up with, it would be FAR preferable to the old way and you knew that if you suggested the idea yourself, a mage Divine re-instituting Circles that gave more powers to mages, the Chantry mothers and Councilors would shoot it down unanimously, possibly win you the shortest tenure as Divine in history. Especially because it neuters the Chantry power! Puts control in the hands of mages, takes away their hold over the templars. No way they’d let that arrow fly. It had to come from outside the Chantry. From someone outside of their power. And it had to come from someone you trusted enough to 1) do it right and 2) have enough power to do it at all. Me. It had to come from me. You pushed that button because you knew I was going to act.”

More wine, more sipping.

Evelyn stopped her manic pacing to face Vivienne—awed just like the men. “All of this. You planned everything.”

“Not everything.” Vivienne rose and cupped Evelyn’s face in her hands. “Are you alright? I knew the decision wouldn’t endear me to some mages but I didn’t expect an attack on you. Especially from not within your ranks. When I heard, believe me, I was distraught.”

“It was unfortunate.”

“And the mage has been dealt with?”

“She still lives and she’s not tranquil if that’s what you’re asking.”

Vivienne shook her head, throwing a glare Cullen’s way. “You’re too soft. It is safe to say the Chantry and I agree on the issue of blood magic. That decision was far beyond anything I expected you to make.”

“No, it was the right thing. That I’m living and breathing now is proof it can have a place in our world. A force for good. But Viv.”

The Divine smiled at her old nickname, glad that her friend had returned to her in earnest. “You could have told me.”

“Oh now where’s the fun in that? The former Left Hand has her spies, I have mine, and my enemies have theirs.”

“Blighted Orlesians and their Game.” Barris growled.

“I’ll drink to that.” Cullen agreed.

“Caught in collusion, that Exalted March might become more than just words on paper—with my blood as the first drops spilled. I have to wait until the model spreads beyond one or two Circles before I could can out in support of it, claiming it as the will of the people. The Chantry…”

“Would be caught between the Sunburst Throne and everyone else.”

“Precisely. Expect action on my part soon.”

“Your Radiance.”

Vivienne stiffened, hearing the censure in tone and title. “You put a lot of faith in me. What would you have done if I caved?

“You didn’t.”

“But if I had?”

“You didn’t.” Vivienne repeated.

“How were you so sure I wouldn’t?”

The Divine turned her gaze to the templar seated next to the Inquisitor, offering another rare smile all his. “I knew no matter what, you would not allow the world revert to the way it was before. To ensure that nothing like what happened to those you cared about could happen again. I counted on your love.”

They blushed together. Evelyn’s nose scrunched and she gnawed on her bottom lip, face flaming under Vivienne’s gaze. “I get why you did what you did. I understand it. But I’m not your pawn to use in your Game. I’m your friend. Don’t treat me like a chess piece again.”

“So noted Your Worship.”

Evelyn sighed, relieved, the specter of her nightmare lifted suddenly from her shoulders. The flames at her feet banked and the coals cooled.

“Well shit, that was a lot easier than I thought.”

“What, my dear, were you thinking?”

“You know what they say about absolute power and its corrupting abilities.”

“You mistakenly assume I have absolute power. I will, rest assured of that, but my position is still precarious at the moment. My enemies outnumber my allies, but what we lack in strength we make up for in conviction. I will see them erased.”

“Hopefully starting in your backyard.” Cullen growled. Ser Barris echoed his displeasure.

“Oh, you mean the little diversions they get up to in the Bazaar?”

The Knight Vigilant snarled again, “My. Lady. We have discussed this, please allow me to…”

“Ser Barris, you are far too precious and important to --our cause to chase after puppet shows and vulgar cartoonery.”

The templar gaped, mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in air, before regaining control of his cool demeanor. “You hear what they call you? The things they say? ‘The Black Divine’ they want to associate you with that heretic in Minrathous, to make it easier to say all kinds of filth. And you allow it!”

“I know only too well what they call me. What they call you, what they call her. I do not allow it, I suffer it. We all suffer it. No matter how many torches you could take to their stalls, the small minded will always speak--and will always have ears to hear them.”

“Evelyn.” Cullen kept quiet during the revelation, his earlier argument with Evelyn festering in the bottom of his gut, pushed aside by Ser Barris’s arrival and meeting the Divine. The creeping sickness returned, shame staining his face red. “About earlier. I am so sorry. My words were inexcusable. I never really know what to say for things like this, and I usually end up saying the wrong thing. Please forgive me.”

“Cullen. I never need you to say anything. I need you more to _listen_ when I speak. When Vivienne speaks. When Ser Barris speaks. Listen to what we say, and maybe then you’ll come to some understand about what it means to be us sometimes.”

He nodded solemnly. “For the record, I’m with Ser Barris. I’d burn that blighted stall down.

As Ser Barris and Ser Rutherford began discussing the intricacies of clandestine arson, Evelyn addressed her friend.

“I have to apologize too. When I heard you were bringing Circles back, I may have harbored some unkind thoughts about you. I should have trusted you first. I’m sorry.”

Vivienne waved a hand, “Accepted and forgotten.”

Now she hugged her friend, heart’s burden lifted before reminded of another. “I’m glad the Inquisitor and the Divine are friends again. It means you can help us. Like we helped you. ”

“Help you?”

“We’re about to go broke. My people will starve if we don’t get the help we need.”

“You came all this way to ask for a loan?” Vivienne glared at her, cocking neck and eyebrows.

“I came to make sure you weren’t a backstabbing, ungrateful traitor who forgot her friends but yeah, that too.”

Vivienne laughed and Cullen caught the shadow of a smile on Ser Barris’s face.

“Nobles are pissed about Rainier, they’re pissed about the elven slaves I freed, they’re pissed about the blood magic and with Corypheus gone, everyone’s wondering why they’re sending me support at all. No never mind that I keep the roads clear of bandits, skies free of Dragons, I keep demons and darkspawn off their lands, and support the poor bastards caught in the middle of everybody else’s petty shit. Now that I know you ain’t trying to kill me, you can help me.”

Vivienne’s eyes flashed for a moment, obscuring the frown behind another sip of wine. “I cannot.”

“What!” Evelyn cried and Cullen echoed.

“Not in the way you’re asking at least.”

“Why not?”

“So many reasons. I’m about to begin a purge. The Chantry after the Conclave and the War is in utter shambles. I must rebuild that infrastructure as well as that of my new templars, not to mention continue to cultivate my own support. My position is still not guaranteed, Evelyn. I can be brutal but I must remain shrewd. And it is not shrewd for me to give you that kind of support, not yet. Not when you’re openly supporting the use of blood magic.”

“Oh damnit Viv! I’m not saying we should all have a Maker fucked blood orgy.”

Cullen and Delrin groaned at her swear, made queasy by the implication as having seen firsthand what said blood orgy would look like.

“Sorry sers.” She apologized. “All we’re saying is that we don’t lock up swords for the people they kill, nor the staff that starts the wildfire. It’s the people. A sword protects, or it can kill, its purpose manifest in the _user_. We can use blood magic as a tool like any other tool we use to protect, to heal, and to safeguard.”

“It is still blood magic darling.”

“Yeah! Remember phylacteries, those were blood magic too. _Done to protect_ I might add. Or is it only okay if the Chantry uses it?”

Vivienne’s nose wrinkled, her face souring into an unreadable expression, the first sign of possible anger all night. “Still, what you ask I cannot provide. I simply can’t. It would endanger us both. Not to mention my coffers are tapped thin too.”

“Vivienne. We will starve. Any asshole with a sizable army or a handful of friends with sizable armies, could come in and toss the place and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop it. So many people who cannot help themselves are _depending_ on me and I’ve nowhere to turn save you.”

“I have faith you will discover the solution to your problem. You always find a way.”

“You are my last hope!”

“I am sorry dear girl. I just cannot right now. Keep to your duty, Inquisitor. Be prepared to make the difficult choices and know that I am still here for you. But we have talked overlong, my Right Hand is not as endeared to me as my Left. I suspect she’s a spy and if you’re caught, this whole charade falls apart and I’ll burn on that pyre right next to you. Ser Barris.”

The templar rose, clear in his instructions.

“Now we part again, my dear. It will take some time before our respective dust settles. And once everything has found its place, the Chantry will call upon you. Be ready.”

“We have to make it that far.” Evelyn hissed.

“I have no doubt you will.” Vivienne kissed her check, her left cheek, the ones with the scars. “You’ve always been a survivor.”

Cullen offered no goodbyes of his own save a parting glance to The Divine, who stared him down fiercely, her eyes well understood.

_Remember my last, Commander._

* * *

 

“She offered nothing?” Josephine screeched, dropping her writing board, spilling liquid wax and ink.

“Nothing save the promise the Chantry won’t go to war with us.”

“Promises do not buy bread.” Leliana continued.

“I know. I know. Did anything happen while we were gone? Cullen, our soldiers?”

“Holding for now, mal-contents are grumbling but I’ve arranged for a few diversions to take their minds off not quite empty, not quite full bellies. There was a desertion though, a squad of guards from Griffon Wing. Details will be forthcoming.”

Deflated, Evelyn turned to Josephine and Leliana. “Ladies?”

“The Ferelden and Orlesian ambassador got into a shouting match during a policy meeting. We were discussing warming relations between the two when someone said something about smelling wet dog.” Josephine tried to smile, but only managed to look pained. “The Ferelden took it as a mortal offense despite the actual wet dog in the room considering it was raining that day. They screamed for an hour and they wanted me to pick a side.”

“Did you?”

“I couldn’t. I would have started a war.”

Leliana sighed. “Their relations have deteriorated year after year with Queen Anora Mac Tir. With no consort and no heir, stirring trouble with Orlais might prove shrewd distraction. I was there when Issa Cousland beheaded her father and left her the throne. I imagine she still harbors her father’s bitterness.”

The Inquisitor drained her noonday glass of wine then shattered the glass. “Fuck.”

“Inquisitor! What…what is it?”

“Vivienne said diversions, she said I was a survivor, she kissed me on the cheek. She did it on purpose.”

Evelyn tapped her cheek, fingers running over three long and thing gashes in the flesh.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

“Inquisitor. I have grown used to your swearing but now you are scaring even me.”

“Josie, you said no institution, reputable or not, will loan us any more money.”

“Correct.”

“No friends either?”

“All our favors are exhausted.”

“What about family?”

The war room stilled, her question hanging in the air though by now all four knew the answer to it.

“Evelyn.” Cullen spoke, approaching her, seeing the shake in her shoulders. “No, surely…there must be…”

“No, there’s helping it. We’ve nowhere to go. I have to ask my father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) Twas all according to keikaku  
> Prepare thyself.


	21. Respectability Politics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for domestic violence! Please be advised!

_My Dearest Nug,_

_Words cannot express my joy at hearing from you. We heard about your triumph over the Great Enemy. See, didn’t I tell you, you would succeed. You should listen to your father dear girl, I may be old but I am not senile. Your grandmother expresses her salutations as well and looks forward to seeing you. I do expect that I will be seeing you very soon, immediately, in fact. As quick as you can come, and I would be delighted to aid you in any way I can!_

_The timing of your letter is extremely fortuitous for us both. It is Grand Tourney season and I am to be the sponsor this year. Imagine the Celebrated Inquisitor gracing our humble Marcher Tourney with her presence! The spectacle that would generate! It would endear us to the common folk and the nobles alike._

_Send word of your itinerary and I will make the necessary arrangements. There will be a ball to inaugurate the games and I expect you to be there with your full retinue. How better to show the nobles of ‘Trevelyan respectability’ than by a full display of your command?_

_I am delighted to see you again daughter. My last visit was entirely too short. And I regret not being able to spend more time with your companions. Your Madam de Fer is the new Divine. Pity. I was most looking forward to seeing her again, such a delightful creature!_

_Your mother sends her greetings. As do your brother and sister-in-law._

_I expect to hear from you soon._

_My Love_

_Bann Gareth Leandro Trevelyan_

**

“Sorora, there has to be another way.” Dorian paced the room, too upset to drink from the bottle of Sun Blonde Vint-1 she cracked open to commiserate with the other man in Skyhold who knew a thing or two about shitty fathers. “Or, perhaps it won’t be as bad as you think? Maybe he’ll send the coin we need by Western Approach Union?”

Evelyn stuffed her father’s letter in Dorian’s face, the mage read, scanning quickly before stopping on a pair of emphasized words.

“What’s all this about ‘Trevelyan respectability’?”

Evelyn cringed, groaning into her next pull from the bottle, uncaring that some of the liquid dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

“Game I been playin’ too long.”

Gareth had rules, nothing so stringently codified, nothing set on parchment or etched in stone, but still written in marks on her body. Most gone now, healed.

“Always have your hair straight and presentable. Wear presentable clothing. Dresses of quality make and modest cut. If you are a woman, demure. If you are a man appear firm but genial. If you are slighted, protest but do so in a way to preserve the feelings of the offending party. Drink to be sociable but never more. Do not engage in behavior associated with the ‘lesser races’. Speak in Trade at all times clearly and distinctly. If in the correct company, speak only High Orlesian or High Antivan. Never allow the vernacular to come across your tongue.

“Don’t raise your voice.

“Don’t get angry.

“Don’t laugh too loudly.

“Don’t swear.

“And always appear, at all times, to be the best example of the Trevelyan Family. What you do reflects, for good or ill, on us all.”

She pulled the bottle from where it rested between her knees, taking another long and messy gulp from it. Dorian breathed to offer interjection but Evelyn kept going, running through the gamut, mouth and skin and soul ‘remembering her courtesies’.

“Those are the rules. How I’m ‘posed to govern myself in his presence. How all his children are ‘posed to govern themselves.”

“Evelyn, you are as though the Maker said ‘See this list? You will be the opposite’. How could you even...?”

The Inquisitor glared at him pushing the bottle toward Dorian who took it, corked it, and set it aside. “Dorian, I suspect _you_ know very well how.”

Smile at the girls.

Dance with them.

Kiss a few from time to time to make the deception appear authentic.

Meanwhile.

Never meet him in public.

Meet him rarely in private.

Meet in places neither of you frequent in the daytime and for love of the Maker _only go at night._

Dorian rethought that bottle of wine. He opened it, turning the cork to ash before tipping the bottle to his lips and draining it dry. “You put on a show.”

Evelyn nodded. “Exactly. Because if you don’t. If you slip. If you forget a rule, a courtesy…”

“It’s life or death, or in my case blood magic or death.”

Evelyn reached for Dorian’s hand, taking it and squeezing. “My punishments were never something so dire. But where most parents keep a growth chart by making hash marks in the wall, I left bloodstains.”

“You know none of us would let him lay a hand on you. You know that don’t you?”

“I’m not afraid of him hurting me.” She traced idle fingers over her scarred cheek, three thin and long gashes made by her father’s gauntlet, right there in Skyhold, what was supposed to be her safest place from him. “That kind of pain I can handle.”

Dorian sputtered, sickened by her casual acceptance of such abuse. “Sorora!”

“It’s not about that. I never wanted to go back. I don’t want to see the dent in the wall and remember that was almost my head. I don’t want to see the bed where Cousland died saving my life. The only reason why I’m here at all was because I was running from him. Trading the prison of my home for the prison of a Chantry because it was the only place I could flee where he couldn’t snatch me back.

“And now, I have to go back and beg his for help. I have to go back and kneel and smile and call him ‘papa’ and let him kiss me goodnight because it’s what a ‘respectable’ daughter does. Knowing if I don’t, those kids we all come to care for, starve. Our army disintegrates. Our mages languish. In retrospect, seems like its a small price to pay.”

Somewhere in her heart a burden shifted, buckled, and the weight of the world pressed down heavy.

**

The rent in her left hand didn’t sting, it merely glowed a muted jade—like a wound that never healed and bled only green light. “Vaughn is the oldest.” Cullen listened intently, laying kisses in her naked shoulder, watching her raise her hand to his ceiling and splay her fingers, counting off.

“I didn’t mind Vaughn, we were too far apart in age to be close though. And father always took him on his trips throughout the Bann, getting to know the business of running it since it’ll be his one day. So while we ‘grew up’ together we really didn’t grow up together. He inherited father’s nasty behavior most likely a consequence of being the oldest son with all the pressure. He could feel what father felt, what I feel too sometimes. He is the eldest son of one of the richest families in the entire March, yet he can’t go to a ball without getting sneered at if he’s invited at all. It made him indifferent and cruel. It made him just like his father. I hate my dad, I pity my brother. And…I guess I kinda hate him too for what he’s done to Masan.”

For her oldest brother, she dropped her index finger and went to the middle.

“Laia and Maxwell are second, Mother had them one right after the other.” She dropped her two middle fingers.

“Why didn’t they come with your father to Skyhold?”

“Both are dead. Laia died in childbirth, she was 18, her first child. I think of all of Gareth’s children she was the most loved and the happiest. Mother doted on her, her princess, her true princess. Father never laid a hand on her. Didn’t have the expectations of being the eldest male and was so perfect. Perfect temperament, mind, and beauty, ‘respectable’ as my father would say. The child my parents had for love instead of duty. She died screaming in her bed, her baby minutes after her. I don’t remember her husband. She was fair skinned, had the ‘good’ hair. She was their prize. Mama was never right after her.”

“I’m sorry.” He spoke the apology into her skin, his arm thrown over her waist, hand drawing lazy circles in her ribs.

“They were both broken after that. No time for Maxwell, who they shipped to Rivain to live with my mother’s family. He drowned in the Bay, shortly after arriving.

“Then came Alphy. He was born sweet. Made of love and affection.”

Her eyes shimmered in the dark, wide and wistful, lit by a fond smile.

“If Laia was the princess, then Alphy was the prince, Maker blessed. We did everything together. He read to me. He taught me to read. The least I could do for him was…stop father from ruining him too. And I lost him anyway.”

She pressed her thumb over her folded fingers, leaving her pinky standing.

“And then there’s me. The runt. The disappointment. The blackest sheep in the herd.” She pressed her finger down until the hand became a fist.

He searched her face in the dark, the candles blown out by winter winds. She brought her furs and drew them around their bodies, pressing her skin into his for more warmth to share.

“You’re returning home, it should be a happy occasion. Is there anything there that holds a fonder memory? Anything there that will make you happy?”

She nodded, answer obvious in the way she smiled. “That you’ll be there with me.”

His chest tore and broke open, heart bleeding into her hands. And she took it tenderly, tender like the  hands on the sides of his face as she kissed him, heart’s blood on her lips.

“Don’t do this.” He whispered around her mouth. “Don’t go. We’ll find another way.”

“Fe silans tanpri.” She broke her first rule already, forgot her first courtesy, murmuring into his neck, tongue tracing fire on the shell of his ear. For him, she would break every rule and forget all her courtesies. All other things, her pride, her dignity, she would smother or suppress, lay aside for a greater good, but never her love. She broke her first rule, first of many.

_Speak only High Orlesian._

Grandmere knew the language of the common folk, the ‘vulgar’ Orlesian spoken in the streets by the people who lived in alienages and slums. The words that purred in the back of the throat instead of intoned high in the nose. Evelyn learned both languages at her knee, yet her father demanded she speak only one.

“Kite fè lanmou.”

It sounded like the princess language coming from the hunter’s mouth. Orlesian but rawer, like the words were coming from her soul. “What are you saying to me?” Question asked breathlessly, flavored with a hiss as she bit his neck, his whole soul still, straining to hear her. Everything in him silenced when she spoke--he felt like quiet, peace.

She teased him with a grin, the kind that raised the hairs on his arms and prickled his skin. “You can’t tell? Pay tét komik?” She carded her fingers in his curls, drawing from him another rapturous shiver. Her voice he loved, unequivocally, unmatched by even the love of his Maker, but this…? This melding of princess and huntress-- she spoke her two languages, her different codes for different situations but here now, she gave him both.

All.

Everything.

“Then let me be clear.”

She drew her lips to his chest, to the red wine scar across his heart.

“Renmen m’chere.

“Ou se lanmou mwen.

She placed kisses to his heart and the rest of him.

“Ou se lanmou lavi'm.

“Mwen pa ka viv san ou.

“Renmen m’chere.”

“M’chere,” he repeated, tongue too thick and too tied, too _choked_ with love to make the sound in his throat for the other word.

Evelyn purred, cat like, when the word left his tongue. She snatched it up with her mouth, greedy kiss devouring the sound.

“M’chere.” Again, stronger in inflection.

His improvement earned him a breathy moan, his rewards dripping from her mouth as more sighs, more little gasping noises, more words he didn’t need to understand to _know_.

“Mwen vle ou.” She opened her arms.

“Yes.” He fell into them.

**

“Your family knows about us.” She held him, her eyes closed to his golden glow. His ear studied her heart while his hair tickled under her chin.

“More or less, yes.”

“Will they mind me? Will they mind that we don’t match? Will they be like Rosalie?”

“Some might, Grandmere won’t though. She’ll mind other things.”

“That I’m not noble.”

“And that you kicked my father’s ass the first time you met him.”

“I did do that. Maker that was fun! Is it too much to hope for a reprisal?”

“My lion will have to keep his roar to himself while we’re there. For this to work, we’ll have to play by his rules and he has a lot of them. I’m his shiny new toy, doesn’t matter that I’ve been his daughter the last 27 years, I matter now. He’ll want to show me off, a display of ‘Trevelyan respectability’.  If the Winter Palace threw you for a loop, expect this to be something even more dramatic. We need this. There’s no other way. So I’ll suffer his false affections, his act that I’m his loving daughter. I’ll suffer…worse if it comes to that.”

“If he hurts you Evelyn, I swear…” Cullen raised his head from her heart to fix her with a smoldering stare. She kissed him, easing his temper with a mollifying smile.

“Shh…go to sleep pay tét.”

He kissed her mouth hard and laid back down across her, wrapping her tightly to him.

“M’chere.” He mumbled and repeated. “M’chere.”

**

It did not snow in Ostwick for Satinalia, the winter never got so cold. Maybe a few times in her earlier life she remembered there being a light dusting of white, but never thick full blankets of it. When they were younger, when Alphonse considered it his duty as the older brother to teach his younger sister her letters, Alphy read to her from his picture books and she loved the stories of Satinalia the most. Toys coming to life, missing soldiers finding their way home to loved ones, ghosts visited upon the cruel and heartless to scare them into mending their evil ways.

Alphy and Evey read those kinds of stories the most, praying for life to imitate art.

Alphy and Evey didn’t read about Satinalia anymore, Alphonse long gone for the Chantry life, leaving his BB behind, prayers unanswered, art still art and life still life.

But this year promised a different kind of Satinalia—not one with snow, or talking toys, but different than what she was used to. Eldest brother Vaughn’s new wife, a pretty Antivan woman, took it upon herself to arrange the celebration in honor of her new place in the family.

Alexia was a slight woman, fine boned and beautiful. Her pale amber skin and fine, arrow straight hair just as important to her husband and father-in-law as her status as a merchant’s daughter. Gareth crowed over his wife and new daughter, fine examples of ‘Trevelyan respectability’, exhorting that his stocky built, dark-skinned, wool headed daughter follow in their footsteps as best as nature could allow.

“Think of the fun we’ll have Susanna!”

Her accent was thicker than honey, one you had to dig through with a spoon for understanding. She often switched between her mother tongue and the common of the household, aggravating the servants but no real bother for anyone else. Gareth ensured all his children were well versed in at least two other Thedosian languages.

Susanna did not share her new daughter’s enthusiasm, still mired in grief for the loss of her oldest one. Laia died in childbirth some 15 years ago but the pain remained fresh as though it were hours previous. She sipped her wine, a vintage flavored with more extract of deathroot than actual wine, comfortably numb and indifferent to Alexia’s bubbly holiday spirit.

“In Antiva, we celebrate Satinalia for the entire week with comedy plays and masques and food so rich you’ll be fit to burst! Do you think your father will hire a fool to come entertain us?” Alexia preened for her husband who smiled tightly and answered his wife with a gruff shake of the head.

“Father prefers his celebrations traditional. Midnight vespers and a gift exchange. You shouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“Nonsense! This will be my endeavor, my gift to you all. Evelyn, will you assist me?”

Evelyn and Alexia were close in age, early twenties (the two of them 9 years Vaughn’s junior). Evelyn liked Alexia enough but feared for the woman, enough time spent in this house would kill anyone’s spirit, even one like hers.

Evelyn shook her head and the other woman frowned, wondering what she’d done to cause such a coolness between sisters so soon.

Undaunted, Alexia continued her mission to Antivan up the Trevelyan family Satinalia celebration.

She dressed Cousland in motley and made the cooks roast quail and game fowl instead of the traditional beef dishes.

Evelyn relented, needled by Alexia’s good nature and easy laughter. Together they made Alexia’s Satinalia wishes come true, just like in the stories.

And just like in the stories, the cruel and heartless miser arrived to ruin the good cheer.

Father cursed and screamed, already well past drunk and dangerously close to violence. If Evelyn interceded delicately, she might defuse the situation. The holiday needn’t be ruined. Just a little touch, don’t look at him, don’t raise your voice. Smile. Demure. If you show meekness he won’t hurt you.

“Father, leave her be, she didn’t know any better and was only trying to do—“

Gareth backhanded her mid-sentence, hard enough to cut her lip and his knuckle on her teeth. The sting only made him angrier.

“I wasn’t talking to you!”

Alexia gasped, shocked by the casual violence. Evelyn took the blow in stride, as did Susanna. As did the servants, and the valets.

And the cooks.

And the stable master.

And the kennelmaster.

A house full of people and not one lifted a voice in outrage.

Gareth Trevelyan was lord of his house, author and finisher of all the destinies contained therein—his perfect image meticulously constructed through various exercises of charity and maintained by a network of friends and partners. Those who voiced dissent, found themselves a pariah, blacklisted from all other houses in the City for spreading cruel and baseless accusations.

Lord Trevelyan? An abuser? The man who dedicated his youngest son to the Chantry? The one who went to service twice every week and led Chant Studies every Wednesday? Who’s wife taught children’s Satur-school? The man who allowed the poor children to ride his prize horses in exchange for a smile each year at the Summerday Festival?

The man with the perfect wife and perfect children?

Him?

That Gareth Trevelyan?

Impossible.

_I don’t believe you._

“My Lord, if I gave offense…” Alexia stammered, hot tears flowing down a shame burned face.

“Quiet your tears. I do not wish to hear your blubbering.”

“I just…I…”

“I said enough!”

Evelyn watched her father strike, and did not move to stop him, thinking her better served to learn this most important lesson about her new family early. Maybe even spur her to get out while she still could. Gareth wouldn’t hunt down a daughter-in-law as dire as he would a blood daughter.

She was quiet, yelping only once in pain. Good, Evelyn thought, moaning only made him hit more and harder.

Yet once the shock wore off, Alexia started to whimper, small warbling gasps. She cried for her husband but Vaughn wasn’t there, hours gone, most likely holed up in his quarters with his own bottle of deathroot flavored wine or in a clandestine meeting with one of his mistresses.

Evelyn hunted to escape their father when she could.

Vaughn did other things.

“Your meddling has ruined a perfectly decent celebration.”

“I’m…I’m….” Alexia’s words hitched in her throat.

Stop talking, stop talking!

“Shut up!”

He felled her with another blow, a harder one with a closed fist. Alexia crashed to the floor, coughing, spitting blood from her mouth.

_Let it go. Alphy is gone. He’s not hitting you, for once he’s got something to direct his anger at that ain’t you. Let it go, she’ll learn. Let it…_

“Father stop!”

That Satinalia it snowed.

Evelyn missed it.

It melted by the time she could see out of her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My family has roots in creole Louisiana, so I decided to throw some Haitian creole into the mix. ( I am aware Lousiana creole =/= Haitian creole)
> 
> Translations:
> 
> Fe silans tanpri  
> Be quiet.
> 
> Pay tet komik  
> Silly straw head
> 
> Kite fè lanmou.  
> Let me make love to you.
> 
> Renmen m’chere.  
> I love you.
> 
> Ou se lanmou mwen.  
> You are my love
> 
> Ou se lanmou lavi'm.  
> You are the love of my life.
> 
> Mwen pa ka viv san ou.  
> I can't live without you.
> 
> Mwen vle ou.  
> I want you.
> 
> If I've butchered anything, my utmost apologies.  
> Hey! Thanks for reading!


	22. Synesthesia

Dorian was not used to recurring responsibilities, not used to actively maintaining a schedule of things people counted on him to do.

Sure he’d grown used to (occasionally) leaving food out for the orange tabby that seemed to find his window sill an appealing place to rest his head. But that was a castle cat, already grown fat on the mice that harrowed the kitchen staff and the pantry.

Less so now.

Much less so.

No grain for the mice. No mice for the cat. Cat comes to Dorian mewling for food.

“I’ve nothing for you, kitty.” He apologized, shaking the dust off a sleep roughened voice. “I’m sorry.”

If he could eat his apologies, he’d be fat as the cat once was. Tongue glutted on the word from over use as he made his daily rounds, body somehow used to this one routine and weary of it.

Far too damn tired of saying ‘I’m sorry.’

To the soldiers strapped with fever and flu, normally benign inconveniences now proving near fatal.

“I’m sorry.”

To the young elven boy, legs bowed so wide he waddled duck like when he walked– on the good days when he could summon the strength to do it.

“I’m sorry.”

Blood magic could only do so much, a tool yes, but a tool needed to be suited to the task to work. Blood magic could not  fill their empty bellies or repair a broken and hungry spirits.

“I promise,” he said, unsure of lie or truth. “When I return I’ll bring you a big huge bag of oranges for you and all your friends. Would you like that minuta?”

Wide and bleary eyed the boy nodded.

Bloody eyed, Dorian passed his magic through the boys legs, easing some of the undue strain placed on his hips and knees from slowly deforming bones.

He saw to the 12 other children, promising them each a big huge bag of oranges for them and all their friends.

“You’re beat, kadan. Rest.”

Dorian jumped, scared witless. “Venhedis you can’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Wasn’t sneaking. Been here a minute.”

Several minutes, thirty of them, watching Dorian bleed himself again and again, tearing open a tiny cut on the back of his hand, blood welling to the surface of normally pristine and unbroken skin, smoky and spicy like cured tobacco.

Now dry and cracked, like the leaves.

“Rest.” He repeated, in the tone that meant he could take no for an answer, but Dorian would regret it later.

“I’ve too many patients to see. We’re departing for Ostwick  tomorrow. I have to make sure they’ve been attended to before I go.” Dorian rose from Joseph’s bed, the boy stricken by the flu like so many others.

Dorian wobbled and pitched forward, lightheaded, too much blood given in one day.

“Fuck! Dorian!”

“I’m fine!” the mage pushed him away. “You needn’t pretend to care for my sake. I know you’d rather I not do this.”

“You really think that I…?”

“Lie to me, I dare you. The great Hissrad, consummate liar. Look me in the eye and tell me this doesn’t disturb you.” He held up his cut hand, blood congealing around the wound.

Iron Bull growled, caught up himself for a change. “It does bother me.”

“So wait outside.” Back turned, Dorian went to his next patient, taking his penknife to the skin to break open the font again.

“No.” Bull snatched the knife.

“You ass…”

Bull drew the knife across the back of his own hand, in a mirror of Dorian’s self-same scar. “It bothers me. It bothers me.” He stressed the words, upset that he could find no way around the sentiment. No way to get passed it, not yet. “Here. Take mine.”

“Amatus!”

Red blood welled from the cut and began to drip to the floor. “Take mine. Best way to cure a sickness is to expose yourself to it so your body can fight it.”

“I’m not treating a common cold Iron Bull!”

“I know, nobody bleeds with a runny nose.” He laughed mirthlessly and Dorian rightfully did not return the chuckle. “Use mine. I want to know what it feels like. I wanna know I don’t have to be scared of it.”

“You’re afraid of me?”

Bull nodded, averting his eye, more shamed by the heartbreak flavoring Dorian’s question than by his own fear. Dorian pulled him by the wrist to his patient’s bed.

Susa slept fitfully, another victim of Skyhold’s winter flu outbreak. “She has a fever and a nasty cough. Food thicker than the rice gruel we feed her would see her back on her feet but lieu of that.” Dorian reached for Bull’s bleeding hand. “Your hand please.”

Bull pushed his hand forward and looked away, like a child unable to watch a stitch sewn or a tooth pulled.

“I won’t hurt you, or anyone else, but least of all you.”

Dorian learned how to shut his mind away from the magic, to prevent memories from bleeding across healer and healed. But he opened that channel as his eyes colored red, like drops of red dye in a glass of milk.

He made Bull  _feel_  him.

And Bull felt….color.

He saw sound.

Taste burst across his vision, the ripest fruits dripping sweet juice in his brain and in his heart. He tasted Dorian’s words in his mouth as the blood flowed from him, through Dorian, and into Susa keeping her fever banked and at bay.

_I won’t hurt you. Ever._

The message tingled just under his skin, feeling like music thrumming in his flesh. Dorian was in him, suffusing with…

Before he could summon a word to fit what he felt, the connection left him, bleeding away as the blood on his hand sucked back into the scar. His shoulders slumped hard, as though Dorian had been holding him up and that’s what it felt like, that Dorian was  _holding_  him.

“Done.” The mage placed a hand on Susa’s forehead and the woman sighed in her sleep, now eased, temperature normal. “Thank you. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Now he lied, still bewildered by the sound of flowers in his ears. Dorian stood, but the Iron Bull pulled him back down, yanking hard on him, making the mage fall into his lap.

The liar kissed the blood mage.

And the blood mage tasted like love.

**

“Sure you gonna be alright by yourself? Don’t start any fights while we’re gone.” Evelyn teased Samson moving her Chancellor to challenge his Bailey.

Behind her Cullen made a strangled noise of distress. The move exposed her Knight, a piece she really couldn’t afford to lose.

Not that she was winning, or had any hope.

Samson was just too good, matched only by Cullen.

“I’ll be fine. And I won’t start the fights but if they wanna pick ‘em, I’ll finish ‘em.”

Samson took the Knight and Evelyn groaned.

“Hits like a druffalo, eats like a druffalo, plays chess like a druffalo.” Samson teased her back taking a swig from a horn of ale that he spat right back out.

“Maker’s balls Rutherford, what is this piss?”

“It’s a Ferelden whitbier.” The Commander crossed his arms defensively, taking a long gulp of his drink in defiance of Samson’s horrid tastes.

“Its piss is what it is. Nothing like the brews they got in Markham. Now that’s an ale.”

“Here here!” Evelyn clanked her piss whitbier horn with Samson’s. Weak spicy water as it was, beer was beer in a keep gone almost dry of anything stronger than water.

“You’re from Markham Samson?” Evelyn asked.

“Nah. Tantervale. A little spit of a village off the Minater River. They didn’t drink piss water there either. Made the finest moonshine, so strong it’d strip the sins off your soul. Could do with a little bit o’ that. Or at least something stronger than this shite.”

Evelyn sipped her own ale, musing. “Assan had a flask she drank from occasionally. She never shared when I asked for some. And why would she, I was like seven, manise, she said it was. Well one day, I got it in my head to try some manise. Drank the whole bottle. It felt like I swallowed fire, made my eyes water. But I was determined and too far gone. I didn’t want her to call me weak. Oh I was sick. Turns out manise was an elven whiskey, special made by her clan.”

“So that’s why you can drink a bottle of wine at noon, started young did you?” The Commander dodged a flying Chancellor, moving right into the path of a flying Queen, striking right in the breastplate.

“Ass.”

Samson laughed, the light from his smile lifting some of the shadows from his eyes. “When you come back Lady Herald, bring me something better to drink.”

“Won’t work. It’ll be gone by the time she makes it off the boat.” 

Samson and Evelyn upended the chessboard together, sending all the pieces flying for Cullen’s head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you thought Val Royeaux was bad, buckle up kids. We're all about to have a bad. Time.


	23. It's Different Up Here

Two weeks later their boat arrived in Ostwick’s harbor, Cullen the first to stride off , thankful to be free of the floating prison he’d been chained in for four days. The companions, save Sera, had the good taste to keep their opinion of their easily sea sickened Commander to themselves, choosing instead to distract him with card games on the deck and lots of liquor below deck.

Word spread to the people. The Inquisitor would make landfall today. A crowd gathered, masses teeming on the docks jostling for position and cheering when her boat docked.

“Seems like there’s a party waiting for you Viney.” Varric gestured to the bright streamers and crowds of people swarming the pier anxious to get a look at the famous Inquisitor.

“They ain’t waiting for _me_ Varric, they’re waiting for the Inquisitor.”

Varric looked puzzled. “I don’t think I follow you.”

Evelyn straightened her back, lifted her head and fixed a grim gaze to the crowd of faces. “You will.”

* * *

 

That morning, she dressed for war like her father, donning crown and sword and special armor, Jospehine ages ago, having commissioned a special gauntlet for her anchored hand.

“Josie, I cannot. There is no way in Maker’s Creation I can shoot a bow with this fucking golem on my hand.”

“You aren’t meant to.”

“Then what’s the damn point if I can’t fight in it?”

“Oh, you’re still fighting Inquisitor.” Josephine smiled cryptically. “By ensuring everyone else is too afraid to fight against you.”

“Will you help me with this?” She lifted her sword to Cullen, amused by the quirk of his face.

“Did you learn swordplay some time when I wasn’t looking?”

She shook her head. “I can’t put this blasted thing on right.”

Cullen knelt, looping the sword belt and his arms around her waist. “Why are you wearing this anyway? Your crown too, and that ridiculous gauntlet, no wonder you can’t tie your boots.”

“Can you help me with that too?” She pushed a toe out, drawing attention to the loose laces, fluttering her eyelashes at him like some kind of damsel in distress, felled by unsecured footwear.

Evelyn heard him chuckle as he adjusted the strap on her sword, so long the tip nearly dragged on the ground without his intervention. “Swords and armor are supposed to make you stronger, not helpless.”

She sighed. “It’s different up here for people like me. For my family.”

“Because you’re…” Cullen reached for her free hand, the right one, his coin kept in its little bracelet nestled firmly within the palm. He kissed the dark skin on her knuckles. “Different.”

“Exactly. It’s not hate. Not the same way people hate elves or qunari or mages. But I guess, it kinda is. Like a simmering contempt. Were we not rich, there are all these ‘rules’ people like us, different people, are expected to follow. Expected to show deference to other folks.”

“Who look like me?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s so foolish.” Cullen laced her boots, pulling the cords eyelet by eyelet ensuring they were tight and well fit.

“Yeah, in another life it’d be me doing this for you. Even the notion of you, a corpseface, kneeling before me, a mudskin…”

She heard Cullen hiss, the slur making him profoundly uncomfortable.

“Get used to it. You’ll hear it a lot in casual parlance. Being rich doesn’t make me immune to it, it just makes the words they use sound less like curses and more like compliments. The contempt isn’t so blatant, it’s veiled, sinister. My father’s friends smile in his face yet call him all kinds of filth behind his back. He gets locked out of business deals, locked out of marriage alliances. If they don’t know who he is, when he goes out walkin’, men will push him into the street because it’s expected. That’s why he always dresses like he’s going to war. Full armor, full family crest. He has to make sure everyone knows the rearing horse of House Trevelyan so no one will mistake him again. People don’t think were supposed to have the kind of wealth we do, it makes them jealous and angry. We’re supposed to aspire to nothing higher than what they allow.”

“How? How is that kind of behavior acceptable?”

Evelyn shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It’s just the way things have always been. But now that I’m here, I’m going to show them exactly who I am. How high I can fly. I won’t let them mistake me for a thief instead of a lord’s daughter. I won’t let the baronet mistake me for the help again even though I was wearing diamonds I _owned_ while she wore a borrowed broach from Lady Martinique, the bitch.”

“That sounds extremely specific.” He finished with her boots and rose to his feet, offering her a sympathetic smile.

Evelyn laughed, shrugging. “So now you see the need for the full parade dress. Gotta send a message, and it’ll have the added benefit of pleasing _‘Papa’_.” Evelyn cringed, recoiling at the bitter yet familiar taste of the word on her tongue. 

“I gotta play by his rules, play the old game.” Her shoulders slumped, memory weighing down with the duty. “You learn how to walk, and talk, how to pretend. How to ignore the gross feeling in your skin when your father kisses you goodnight in front of company knowing that if you show even the slightest sign of displeasure you’ll pay for it later. Call him ‘papa’ he likes that, solidifies that ‘Trevelyan acceptability’ he’s always trying to go for. If Gareth looks and acts and has the family of a perfect lord maybe everyone will start treating him like the Lord he’s meant to be. They haven’t yet. I don’t think they ever will. But I still gotta play the game. It’s different up here.”

“If he hurts you…” Cullen reiterated, letting his threat dangle in the air. “What happened at Skyhold won’t happen here. He won’t touch you.”

“No he won’t. He never did that kind of thing where right respectable folks could see.  I still must ‘remember my courtesies’ as he like to say, a warning that I better act right or earn a fist later.”

Cullen gagged. “I’ll kill him.”

“You won’t.”

Protesting, Cullen wrapped a possessive arm around her waist. “Evelyn Cecilia.”

“Cullen Stanton.” She fired back, smirking with the corner of her mouth.

“Let me help. How can I help?”

She kissed him, light and sweet but sad, he tasted sorrow on her lips as she whispered against them. “Please, just stay close.”

**

 _I’m not ever coming back_. She thought stepping onto the ramp of the _Siren’s Call_ the only ship that would take her with so little coin in her pockets, its captain- a busty Rivani woman- showing sympathy in her fanged smile.

 _Maker please_. Prayer never came easy to her, Alphy was the saint and she the sinner. He prayed enough for both their sakes, and when he left, fleeing from their father, she abandoned the practice completely.

 _Maker please._ She pleaded. _I don’t ever want to come back!_

Evelyn stepped off the ramp and onto the docks. “So much for that.” She growled to herself, sparing the sky a glare. “And you wonder why I don’t pray.”

**

The Grand Tourney drew crowds from all of the Free Marches and beyond and the rumor of the Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste and fellow Marcher come home drew those crowds to the streets.

_Where is she?_

_I don’t see her._

_Move! I want to see her._

_Wait? That’s her!_

_It has to be her! Look! Look at the crown!_

_A mudskin? Andraste’s blessed? I had no idea!_

If he heard them, he knew she could too. Yet never once did her head dip, her back straight and head high, like a queen come home victorious from war. She rode at the head of the column, Sera, Iron Bull, and Dorian right behind her. He had a feeling now, that arrangement was deliberate. Cassandra made a noise of discomfort as she rode next to him.

“Cullen… I think some of them believe I’m the Inquisitor. Can they not see the woman in the crown for the Maker’s sake?”

He heard people shouting for the Herald, waving when Cassandra turned their head towards them, their smiles dying when the actual Herald raised a glowing hand back.

“I don’t think they want to see, Cassandra.”

“I hate this place already.” She muttered.

“I do too.”

Ostick bore some similarity to Kirkwall, both cities on the sea protected by huge walls, though Ostwick had the greater fortune of having those walls unadorned with statues of suffering and begging slaves. Their Circle was a spiral tower, outside the double walls of the city. Hewn out of the rocky cliffs that jutted up from the beach, extending above them, and topped with a glass dome that in ancient times served as a beacon guiding ships safely into Ostwick’s  port.

“They call Ostwick the ‘walled city’ referring to the double walls that ring it.” Josephine planted her nose in a guidebook, trusting her horse to remain on the path. “It was founded in the Ancient age, their famous double walls built sometime after that.”

The procession of Inner Circle and an escort of Inquisition soldiers passed through the first gate of Ostwick’s outer wall, the white stone pock marked with old battle scars.

“Seems like these walls have been through it.” Varric said, scribbling in his notebook.

“Yes. Its construction was a feat of engineering. Legend states that the King sent out a call for the best builders in Thedas to come and build a wall to protect his city, earning a lordship and a home on the hill for anyone with the best plans. In present day, the hill on which Ostwick sits is where the richest make their homes. Lord Trevelyan has his manor there as well as lands out in the countryside. Lesser merchants and others live at the lower elevations and at bottom of the hill.”

The crowds thinned then disappeared the higher the hill they climbed, docks and market stalls giving way to wooden homes, giving way to brick and mortar then marble homes. Her family lived on the hill for eight generations, Gareth making it a requirement to know the name of the relation that took them from the hill’s foot to its crest. Yet the name escaped her now and the knowledge, rather the lack of it, made her smile.

So much ivy, crawling and covering Trevelyan manor, the building looked made of the forest rather than stone. A modest size dwelling, bordering on small. Trevelyan riches allowed for the ownership of a larger, more prestigious seat for a Bann but the purchase of one eluded Gareth for the last 20 years, mysteriously though, not for lack of available housing.

Her household lined up to meet her and her Inquisition. Father and Mother at the center of a line of servants and lesser relations.

Gareth and Susanna were flanked on one side by her brother Vaughn and his wife Alexia. On the other side stood a hunched but fierce looking woman, kept upright by an exquisite cane hewn from the blackest ebony, the rearing horse of their house carved into the hand grip.

Eartha Arnette Marguerite Trevelyan, affectionately known as Grandmere, the eldest of Alfonso Trevelyan’s children. Grandmere inherited her father's seat upon returning from warring across the Marches, beating back the last hardline Nevarran holdouts left over from their failed war of annexation. She married a Rivaini lord of little import and even lesser love bearing him only one child, her father Gareth.

Gareth Trevelyan was the lord of the house and the family and the lands but Grandmere was its queen.

Evelyn hid a squeal of joy in the back of her hand, such a display of affection would be unseemly in Gareth’s eyes. For this to work, for any of this to work, she would have to slip into old, long forgotten, long discarded skin.

The good daughter.

The devoted daughter.

The humble and contrite and biddable daughter.

* * *

 

Cullen forgot himself for a moment, dismounting from his horse and striding to the head of the column. Without thought he offered his hand, a knight remembering his courtesy to his lady while servants assisted the rest.

“Messere,” He grinned, bowing with a little flourish, remembering Marchers and their silly titles. Ten years in Kirkwall and it never really made sense.

Dignity, pride, but never her love, she smirked right back and took his proffered hand. “Serah.”

He helped her from the saddle, hands on her hips and their eyes locked from Jackson’s back to the ground. Honey lost in whiskey until

“Daughter.”

Shit.

Cullen remembered Alexia and Susanna from their visit to Skyhold. He remembered Susanna’s distant stare that reminded him of a templar who had taken one too many philters of lyrium either in a fit of greed or in a bout of hopelessness. He remembered Alexia’s desperate stare and sad wide eyes and her son who was a ball of sweet joy--the boy missing from the lineup.

And he remembered Gareth, clad in armor too shiny to have ever seen use outside of a portrait sitting, with a smile too saccharine to be real. Cullen stiffened and stepped away, his own smiled dying just a little bit.

“Welcome home.” Gareth opened his arms.

Evelyn took a step. Then another.

And smiled so wide it made her cheeks hurt, lips peeled back from her clenched teeth, molars grinding on her tongue to prevent her from screaming.

“Papa.” She embraced him, curling her toes in her boots, recoiling as best her body could without actually recoiling.

Father and Daughter parted, her smile still strained and his still easy. “Come, we have much to discuss for the ball, an itinerary to keep to. I will have the servants show your soldiers and companions to their quarters and have refreshment brought. They will be attending of course?”

It sounded like a question, meant as a demand. Evelyn nodded mutely, somehow fixated on his hands, waiting for them to curl around her neck or lash out in a fist, surprised she hadn’t flinched yet out of habit.

“Good. Come along now daughter. Your mother and brother are eager to see you, as is your Grandmere. So many years to catch up on yes?”

“Yes.”

“My dear?”

“Yes _papa_ ,” Evelyn corrected herself, stomach revolting at the meek sound coming from her mouth.

Dignity.

Pride.

But never _love._

Evelyn’s father smiled, seemingly pleased, offering neither Cullen nor any of her other companions even a nod of recognition.

Cullen watched Gareth’s hand rise, moving from the side of his body to pat his daughter affectionately on the head.

She flinched.

Only a little, only the smallest, tiniest startle that began with a quickly closed eye and wince rippling down the side of her face. Evelyn corrected herself quickly, settled and righted, eyes darting to see if anyone else noticed.

No one seemed to see. The Trevelyan’s all still standing and smiling blankly.

He noticed, fists tightened but still at his sides.

**

Eartha remained, lingering unnoticed as the servants departed with the mounts and soldiers while Evelyn departed with Gareth and Susanna, Vaughn and Alexia.

Her cane crunched on the gravel as she walked, inspecting her granddaughter’s Inquisition they way she used to inspect her own soldiers. Eartha found them fit, if a little unorthodox, the bare-chested qunari looking like a riot of good times. But the soldier, the handsy one, he stood out the most.

“So you’re the one.” Cullen turned to the white haired woman, wrinkled and withered but with such a steel in her voice it made Cullen straighten. “You’re the one who stole my granddaughter from me.”

Cullen started, and covered his gasping choke with a cough that fooled precisely no one. The woman’s eyes shimmered, though red rimmed and watery still sharp enough to cut when she fixed her glare on him.

“When I heard of Evelyn leaving home, I had no idea she would be snapped up in the jaws of the famed Inquisition. It seems I have you all to blame for keeping her from me.”

Cullen’s shoulder’s relaxed, relieved he wouldn’t have to have that particular conversation with a family member so soon.

“It would seem as though her coming was providence of the Maker.” He answered evenly, keeping his tone serious.

“Indeed. Your name serah, what is your name?”

The Free Marches have a bow, left fist over the heart, right arm bent around the back, Cullen dipped his head in the bow remembering, again, his own courtesies.

“Cullen Rutherford, my lady, Commander of the Inquisition’s forces.”

“And so you would be the man responsible for my granddaughter’s safety.”

“Begging my lady’s pardon but, she takes care of herself.”

Eartha laughed, louder than what he would guess would come out of a frail frame like hers. She laughed like a soldier in the barracks after the punchline of naughty joke, one that would set a grown man’s ears afire with an embarrassed blush, it eased him instantly. There was a soldier in this woman, the body gone but the mind and the spirit still there. “Even still.” She iced her voice and the soldier in him again straightened. “Thank you. She means more to me than you could possibly understand though…” Eartha cut a glance at him from the side of her eye, smirking in a way too much like Evelyn’s to be mere coincidence instead of family trait. “Perhaps you do.”

Eartha left him as he stammered his excuses, chuckling to herself remembering an old Dalish tune about love.

**

The halls of her home twisted, mazelike, a source of many secret hiding places, cupboards to hide from your brother’s games or your father’s fury. White gloved servants buzzed from place to place, shining, dusting, sweeping, preparing their foyer and Grand Hall for Gareth’s Grand Tourney Ball later that night.

Her father crowed, counting down the list of dignitaries that will be present the same way a collector rattles off pieces of his prized possessions. She recognized some of the names, ‘friends’ she’d been forced to associate with for proprieties sake.

The daughters of dukes, barons, and lords now ladies, princesses, and dames in their own rights. Girls grown to women, girls who used to sneer behind her back and in her face, bleating like sheep when she passed remarking on her  head of hair--back then thick and piled high on her head in tightly coiled black curls.

Father, mother, brother, and wife mounted the grand staircase in the foyer, the stairs splitting into left and right wings at a wide landing, a massive portrait hanging on the wall above.

She never remembered being so happy, joy plain on her 5 year old face, in her crooked smile, in her crooked tooth, and the crooked pigtails jutting from sides of her head. Alphy held her hand, not because instructed but because of desire. He was missing a tooth too, the pair of them visited by the elven tooth spirit within weeks of each other.

Maxwell stood behind his little brother, dressed for traveling, his carriage leaving for Rivain that very day. Laia wore a dress of grey and gold, and was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen in her life. Being a newly minted teenager meant Laia had no time for little sisters, and shooed her away when she went to stand next to her, citing that she did not desire her grubby fingers all over the silk.

Vaughn stood stone faced next to his father, fourteen years old and already embittered to half the world who hated him and the other half who didn’t much mind his existence at all. He wore a sword and shield, by father’s estimation a man grown, the tabbard of their house draped over his black steel armor to conceal its ill fit. Father smiled next to his wife, Susanna’s hand pressed ‘romantically’ into his chest, her other laced with Laia’s fingers, matching bracelets on their wrists.

And Grandmere sat at the center, legs crossed at the ankles with an ermine stole draped around her neck. Her hair was darker then, more salt and pepper than the stark white salt it was now. She sat on wood and velvet surrounded by her issue wearing the Trevelyan diadem--rearing horses of hammered silver flanking a smokey grey stone the size of a robin’s egg. A queen, and 5 year old Evelyn her favorite princess, riding into battle the way grandmere used to, on a stuffed horse clutched in tiny fingers.

Her family, all of them, whole and unbroken. The happiest she’d ever been in this house. The portrait hung like a lie or a taunt, reminding her of fleeting...fled happiness.

She muttered excuses, citing she knew the way to her rooms, and fled the house. Muscle memory taking her out the side door and into the gardens, heading for the largest oak with the sturdiest branches, made for sisters and brothers and elven caretakers to climb.

Elves, like Andrastians, do not bury their dead. They are burned on pyres, ashes scattered. They scattered Assan’s ashes at the foot this tree. Her favorite, where she would doze, chewing on her tobacco pipe rasping old stories about Dread Wolves and slow arrows.

“I am home ha’hren.”

Wind whistled in the trees but offered no other reply.

“I brought you something.” She unfolded a felt pouch containing dried tobacco leaves from Ferelden. “It’s not what you like, doesn’t have that cool minty cure, but Rainier says it’s good and I trust him...about this anyway.” Evelyn buried the pouch in the dirt at the roots of the tree. “Cousy.”

Dogs were accorded less ceremony than a pyre. On the night her hound died, under cover of dark she hauled his body to this tree, dug with her hands as far as she could, and laid him to rest, constantly looking over her shoulder for her father coming after her, looking in his drunken rage to finish her life the way he had her dog’s. 

“Cousy boy. I didn’t bring you a bone. I’m sorry boy. But oh! I met Dog! The Heroine’s hound! You would have loved him. I wish you two coulda played.”

Her Inquisitorial crown sat too heavy, a headache pressing at her temples from where it rested. She took it off. Shed the gauntlet and fumbled with the sword buckle at her waist too. The metal thunked hard into the dirt and for a moment, one quiet moment, Evelyn felt like Evelyn again.

Plain and Ordinary.

But alone.

“You are so much like her and nothing like them. Maker be praised.”

Evelyn turned and let her suppressed squeal fly, Grandmere.

“Girl! Let me see you.”

Evelyn bent to bring her face to face, smiling happily. Maybe...maybe this won’t be so bad.

Grandmere tutted, smoothing her hands over her granddaughter’s face. “Ahh, you still have your mother’s nose and your father's eyes though.”

“That means I have your eyes, grandmere.”

Grandmere howled, laughing loud and hard, thumping her cane against the dirt.

“I prayed to the Maker for your safety everyday. He has brought you home.”

“Maker ain’t have shit to do with it Grandmere. You should have come to Skyhold. Not father.”

“I know child. But I am far too old for such trips now. Not like when you were a babe.”

Evelyn discarded the thought, dismissed it out of hand. “Nonsense. You're still spry. You still walk, you've got your wits.”

Evelyn struck a hand out, one that Grandmere batted away with a quick slice with her cane.

“And you can still wield sword.”

“Who else gonna protect this family when the Nevarrans come?”

“Grandmere, the Nevarrans ain’t come back since they last saw you.” She joked, hoping to tease from her another one of those full, soul warming laughs. 

She was well rewarded.

“Oh shut up...kissin’ your ole granny’s ass. Come. You must prepare for the ball. My son will wish to escort you. As sponsor, he intends to put in the most lavish Tourney the city has seen. The presence of the famed Inquisitor is the jewel in his crown.”

Evelyn gagged.

“I know child. But we must be prepared to do anything for family. We are all we have.”

“That's not true.” Evelyn defended. “I have…”

Grandmere interrupted her. “Soldiers who will leave you when you stop winning. Friends who will desert you when they must. Lovers...heh a lover's heart is always fickle.”

“Yours wasn’t!”

Grandmere shook her head picking a stray leaf out of one of Evelyn’s locs, remembering a woman who wore the same hair, leather thongs and shells and carvings of bone woven into the vines. A woman who wore the forest in her hair.

“No, but she left me all the same. Family is your only constant child. Remember that. Now come. You must prepare.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sigh* I love Eartha so much.


	24. Gossip Folks

Her eyeliner flared like the wings on a Grey Warden’s helmet. The lipstick she slashed across her full lips turned them redder than blood, dark and iron tasting. Her slippers were heeled sabatons, they clicked on the stone when she walked, sounding like war summoned in her wake.

She donned her breastplate made of samite and silk. Gold, like the coin her family was worth. Like the color of his eyes and his smile. The dress began just under the curve of her shoulders leaving her throat bare. Bright yellow gold woven silk fit to her body sloping with her curves until it flared at her knee, like the bell of a trumpet. Sleeves hung loose and long, draped over her arm like a curtain, stopping to gather at her wist, long slashes in the fabric revealing dark and scarred skin underneath.

_Devastate them, darling. Do with fabric unable to be done with arrow. Your confidence shall shake them more than any physical blow. Never let them see you falter. Always smile even when it hurts. Remember this._

“Viv, damn I wish you were here. You’da loved this.” Evelyn reached for her jewelry box, passing her hand over diamonds and cultured pearls blacker than she was. Garnet necklaces and ruby chokers , tokens earned over the years from her Grandmere’s true affections and her father’s obligations.

Nothing satisfied her, the pieces either too gaudy or ill-suited to the dress.

 _There’s something to be said for going jewel-less._  Vivienne advised from some far off place in her brain.

“True.” She answered herself, ignoring the timid knock from one of the servants, announcing her father’s arrival. Ready to escort his daughter to the ball, a breeder showing off the pride of his stables. She scoffed darkly, regretting there was no wine to reach for to take the edge off her nerves.

The knock increased in tempo and urgency, no doubt the poor page terrified that Lord Gareth was being made to wait.

“My lady please...”

“Give me a damn minute!” Evelyn slammed her hand down on her vanity hand echoing with a light metallic ping, like the muffled ring of a bell. She turned her hand over, smiling, and reached for the silk ribbons in her hair box.

**

“So that’s the 5th Duke of Mounthampton. And there is the Comtess de Vingion.” Josephine hid her mouth with her fan, casually pointing out all nobility in attendance to Thom.

“Know you everyone here?” He asked, pulling on his collar. He’d worn wool when a lighter cotton would suffice. While Southern Thedas remained locked in freezing rain, snow, and frigid temperatures, the weather in the Marches, specifically ocean fronted Ostwick kept nice and temperate, like the comfortable cusp between summer and fall.

“Personally? No. But I know of them. Most of them claimed to be Evelyn’s good friend when the Venatori and rift demons trampled across their lands. We sent aid, they sent gratitude. And now all of a sudden all have turned down my request for patronage, citing only vague acquaintance rather than true friendship.”

Josephine heaved a heavy sigh, one that Rainier felt in his own chest. “I hate nobility.” She murmured, clutching his arm tighter.

“Aye, as do I my lady.”

**

The portrait drew him in, reeled him close like a fish on a line. He was drawn to the sweet smile unmistakably her even some twenty or so years later. But the thought that struck him most, leveled him in fact, was not how so innocent she looked or how happy she seemed in this place he knew to be her personal torment. But what rocked Commander Rutherford to his knees was the thought that he wanted, more than anything else in his life, that sweet smile on his daughter’s face.

“Commander Rutherford.”

A hand on the shoulder shook him out of that plain and ordinary reverie, bringing him to face a pretty woman he remembered having a sad smile.

“Lady Trevelyan.” He nodded respectfully to the woman, the wife of the younger Trevelyan lord and mother to the Bann’s grandson Masan.

“Please.” She shook her head with a light smile. “You needn’t be so formal.”

“Alexia then.” He conceded. “You look…” Her smile wasn’t as mournful as he remembered at Skyhold. “Different.”

“Happy is the word you’re looking for Commander.”

Cullen coughed his embarrassment. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to suggest…” He let the sentence end unfinished. He knew Alexia and her son were subjected to the same torments Evelyn was, trapped in their own home, terrorized by her Father-in-law and her husband. She bore that sadness like a burden, it bled into her features and her smile.

No longer.

“Think nothing of it, I am happy for the first time since my son was born.”

Masan Trevelyan had the potential for a good strong sword arm, he remembered. As well as the child’s carefree laughter and almost covetous stares at his lion’s teeth, wondering why Cullen had so many, and he had only one.

“Where is your son? I don’t remember seeing him.”

“He’s not here. My son as manifested his gifts as a mage and has been sent to Ostwick Circle.”

Alexia smiled fondly, recalling his smile when it was time to go. “You are surprised by this?”

He was. “Usually parents don’t think of Circles so fondly. Either as a place that steals their children, or a place that locks them away for some greater good.”

“No Ser Rutherford.” Alexia disagreed, frowning slightly. “For the first time in my son’s life, he is safe. Protected. Given to people that will teach him to use his gifts and far away from his grandfather’s influence. Oh Gareth moaned about it, hollered and screamed, but in the end he had to relent and send my son to the Circle. And with what Evelyn is doing with the Circles. What she will dofor our family, Masan will be the most powerful Trevelyan lord in an age.”

“Then I am glad he is so well cared for, I grew fond of the boy during his stay at Skyhold.”

“And he,” Her smiled waned, old sadness weighing it down again. “He was fond of you. Evelyn too. It is my fondest hope you both have the chance to visit him before you leave.”

“I would like that.”

The Lady Trevelyan smiled again. “Will you compete in the Tourney?”

“No. I would make a poor showing anyway against such talent.”

“That’s too bad, I was looking forward to seeing another one of your beatdowns again.” She slipped him a knowing grin, one he returned.

“Would that there were ‘worthy opponents’ for me to face, and I would reconsider.”

They both laughed at that. “Gareth fumed all the way home, kept checking the looking glass at his busted lip, convinced it’d leave him irrevocably scarred. He payed a healer in every city we stopped in to make sure the wound left behind no marks.”

“Next time I’ll make sure to leave one.”

“Hopefully, there will not be a ‘next time’. Measure yourself Commander. He will hawk her like one of his horses, make her smile so his friends can get a good look at her teeth. Same thing he did to me shortly after my wedding. It will infuriate you, but do not cause a scene, you will only hurt her.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Her words alarmed him, sounding like danger on the horizon.

Alexia opened her mouth, then closed it, deciding better of it. “Just offering advice.”

**

He  _touched_  her, kept his hand placed firmly on the small of her back, pressed insistently as though she might at any moment bolt and flee.

Which was calculated on his part because facing down that room of assholes made her want to do nothing less but bolt and flee.

“May I present, the Lord Gareth Trevelyan and his daughter the Lady Evelyn Cecilia Renee Marie Trevelyan, Grand Inquisitor and Herald of Andraste.”

The room clapped politely as her father guided her down the grand staircase passed the portrait of distant happiness and present sorrow. Vaughn escorted Susanna behind them, both faces bored and blank. Once they made the proper show, no doubt they’d be ready to grab the nearest campaign flute to keep floating on buzzed indifference.

But he  _touched_  her, one hand grasping hers, squeezing a little too tightly. “Smile dearest.” He reminded her with a slight crush of her fingers, words spoken through his teeth as he smiled bright and disarming.

“Yes papa,” She responded in kind, answered also through clenched teeth.

“You will follow me, I will introduce you to our ‘peers’.”

“The same ‘peers’ that called us all kinds of filth behind our backs and to our faces not so long ago?” She tried to sneer though her faked smile.

“The very same.” Gareth answered, face unwavering in his charm. “Remember your courtesies love.”

Her heart soured, fluttering wildly in her chest. “Yes papa.”

**

For one perfect moment she stopped beneath the image of her in the portrait and Cullen saw the girl and the woman in same heartbeat.

And.

He stopped.

Either time stopped or his heart or his brain, he didn’t quite...  _couldn’t_  quite tell what part of him ceased but he ended as she came down those stairs, Andraste come to Rapture him. 

She kept her eyes forward and her smile blank no doubt forced there for her father’s benefit.

 _Look at me_. He begged.  _Look at me so I can die a happy man._

Gareth lead her away, turned their backs to him, and Cullen still died his little death but for a completely different reason.

**

“Lord Pavus, how wonderful to see you again.”

Dorian peered down at the older, stately looking woman with the dazed expression and a smile that drooped in one corner of her mouth. She looked familiar, he was sure he’d seen her nose somewhere before on someone not quite so…

“Ahh…” He stalled, filling the empty space with a deep gulp of wine as his brain tried to recall just who this woman was.

“You don’t remember me.” She gasped, shocked, possibly hurt.

“Forgive me madam, you’ll have to remind me.”

“You told me you were a ‘bird given wings by my beauty’, or do you tell that to all your girls?”

Dorian laughed, trying not to snort. “Ah! Lady Trevelyan. I remember now, and  _no_ I most certainly  _do not_  tell that to my _girls._ ”

He regretted revealing that bit of truth, unsure of how Evelyn’s mother would take being so baldy flirted with by a man who clearly had  _no interest_ , but her smiled deepened rather than disappeared.

“Oh you flatterer!” She slurred somewhat and offered her hand. “Will you escort me? My son is dull company and I find you and I have so many things to catch up on yes?”

Oh.

OH!

Kaffas.

Dorian groaned silently, deep in the back of his throat. Another mistake because Susanna heard it, thinking it a purr. She grabbed his arm and dragged him to the dance floor.

**

She smiled.

Curtsied.

Laughed when it was appropriate.

Expressed sorrow when prompted.

She complimented her father.

Complimented his guests.

She smiled.

She curtsied.

 _She screamed_.

Evelyn tried to escape somehow, casting desperate glances like lifelines hoping for a member of her Inquisition to take one and pull her to safety. But Dorian was dancing with her mother. Sera and Varric were chatting with the servants, Rainier and Josephine were making last and desperate in person attempts to win a pledge or two of coin from the guests. Iron Bull was no where to be seen and Cassandra looked ill at ease in a dry conversation with her brother.

Cullen.

_Where was he?_

“You look like a dream.”

Oh.

He was right beside her, as though he was never--could never be anywhere else. Gareth had let her go to talk trade negotiations with an Arlessa, his vigilance momentarily lax. Cullen slipped into the space, in Gareth’s blind spot, and inched her far enough away from him that her body relaxed, releasing a tense breath that had been locked in her lungs for too long.

“Are you alright?”

“Better now.” Her smile faltered, unsteady, but grew the longer he looked at her.

“Alexia told me he would do this. He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”

She shook her head, lying. “No. You spoke to my sister in law. Did she mention Masan?”

“He’s at the Circle. Apparently he’s a mage.”

“Oh thank the Maker. He’s safe now.”

“Alexia said the same.” He reached his hand for her face but it faltered, falling instead to her neck. “That’s .…” His gloved hand lifted his coin from the hollow of her throat, resting where her collar bones met, tied to her neck in a ribbon of bright red silk. His voice thickened. “Diamonds should rest here.”

Pearls. Gold. Emeralds. Rubies. She should be encrusted with the gems of the world and find themselves enhanced by  _her_.

“Don’t need ‘em. This is best, m’chere.”

“Evelyn, Maker’s breath.” He reached for her, to take her in his arms but Gareth turned and Evelyn stiffened, shying from her lion’s embrace. “Save a dance for me.” she whispered before turning her back to him, refitting that tired smile on her face.

**

_So what do you think?_

_She’s definitely not like how I remembered her._

_But pretty yes?_

_For a mudskin._

_Fair point._

_OH! Lady Inquisitor! It is good to see you again!_

_Well Amelie, rumor has it she and Black Divine consorted with demons for their positions!_

_Of course they did. A darkling Herald of Andraste and now a darkling Divine? What could that be but black magic?_

_Oh Teresa! You...wait, here she comes!_

_Sweetheart! How long has it been? Remember when we used to play as children?_

_What? Of course we were friends! How silly of you….How rude, I’d never  lock you in the barn with the horses._

They did. Evelyn remembered. Her and her sister. Locked her in the barn when she was 11. Her father ignored it, their father denied it and Assan had to break down the door when the girls refused to produce the key.

She smiled away their lies and made petty small talk, making excuses to go on to the next pair of ‘old friends.’

It felt like Halamshiral really, only worse. The Orlesians didn’t mind confronting her with her supposed inferiority. They didn’t whisper, or lie or dissemble, they broadcasted their prejudice, made it  _known and felt_ that she was different and unworthy.

Here.

They lied and tried to make her forget what they’d done to her. Make her doubt such things ever happened at all.

“Wearying isn’t it?” He spoke clearly, without a wine flavored slur, her brother Vaughn. The armor fit his body now, but not his temperament. Were the Maker more fair he would have been born a humble peasant, with little expectations beyond the next growing season. Tall and thin, darker than ebony bark, with his mother’s eyes, hazel flecked with green. “Pretending not to notice. Pretending to forget all the horrible shit they used to do to you, kissin’ your ass now that you could, if you wanted, buy the deed to their house.”

“Vaughn.” He ignored her when they were children. When they were adults. When their father beat her and his wife and his son. “What do you want?”

“Nothin’. I used to think we had nothing in common.”

“We don’t.” She bit, growling her displeasure, a mixture of pity and anger wafting from her.

“Not anymore.” A servant passed by, full glasses of champagne on her tray. He took two and when she reached for the second one, he swallowed both then left her.

“Ahh, ‘tite fille, I often wonder what life would have been like had you been your father’s heir.”

That voice rang clear, lifting her heart and her smile.

“Grandmere!”

Ever sharp, she dressed in the colors of her house, grey and gold, a head wrap of silver silk covering her hair and pined with a diamond horse.

“You look like your namesake.”

“Great Aunt Evelyn L’ouverture?”

“No smart ass, Herald of Andraste.”

“I’m Her Herald, not Her. I even doubt that Herald part. You haven’t seen what I have.”

Grandmere offered her arm and Evelyn took it, unsure of who was escorting whom. “Then you’ll have to tell me all about it child. I do look forward to hearing of your adventures. Though, given the looks I’ve seen you get, I doubt anyone would make that distinction between Herald and Andraste.”

Heat flared in her cheeks like a match struck to dry kindling. “Ahh...well...it’s funny--”

Grandmere grinned “Those nobles’ sons are falling all over themselves, challenging each other to duels over who gets to dance with you first.”

“Really? Dueling over me? The girl they wouldn’t touch at her debut ball for fear of getting dirty!?”

“Perspective changes a man’s attention.”

“There’s only one man here who’s attention is worth having.”

“What was that? Speak up child, you know I’m hard a hearing.”

“Nothing Grandmere. Do you want to dance with me?” Evelyn dodged, not eager to have that conversation just yet.

“Oh no sweet. I’m too old for those kinds of things. Walk me up the stairs chile’, then see to your guests.”

**

Her armor had worn thin. The makeup caked, sat heavy on her skin. Her feet hurt, and the dress cinched too tight in places where she’d rather breathe free. But the night, thankfully, drew to it’s close. The ball wouldn’t end of course, it would continue long into the night, long after the host himself retired to other galas. The nobles of Ostwick,  _all_  of Ostwick would party right up until the opening ceremony of the Grand Tourney the next day.

But she was ready to end it now.

She saw Grandmere to her rooms, lingering longer than what the old woman required but desperate for a moment of peace away from her father and his carrion crow friends.

She descended back down the staircase, alone walking gingerly on sore feet. In the Hall, the band played some slow waltz, couples paired off and dancing.

Evelyn searched, looking for a place to rest weary bones and found him, not far, waiting in fact at the foot of the staircase, hand open in invitation, looking for that saved dance.

"I saw you leave, I waited for you here.”

She let go of another tightly held breath and smiled back, coyly even, readying a wry retort in her princess voice, reaching her hand for his when...

Another hand took it.

Gareth’s.

“Dance with me daughter.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like what you see? Leave a review!


	25. Block Party

_Earlier That Night_

The Iron Bull snatched a glass off a passing tray, winking smartly at the petite elven girl carrying the silver platter most likely worth more than her monthly pay. He’s been places and he’s seen things being a mercenary. And there were times when the pay didn’t require a life in return. Sometimes he could put on a doublet and breeches that fit, stand at the door and look menacing.

He and Krem did that once. For a Nevarran prince. Just stood at the door of his swank ass party scowling. Easiest money he ever made. Seen one ball, seen ‘em all. The Orlesians like to think they put on parties like a theater company puts on productions—each one more unique and grander than the last—but there’s only so many times when The Iron Bull can see pigeons fly out of a pie, or little people joust on the backs of pigs before he realized they’re all tapping the same tired well.

He downed the champagne— at leas that was good —and yawned.

He scanned the party, looking for trouble to not get into—and subsequently get into it. He didn’t get the chance to get his licks in against Boss’s asshole father the way Cullen and Dorian did when he visited Skyhold about a year or so ago. Maybe he could rectify that now. Convince a servant to put nugshit in is bed or start a nasty rumor about paramours and incurable diseases.

No. That’s Sera’s bit. And the Boss insisted that they all be on their best behavior. A lot was riding on this, the health and life of the Inquisition was riding on this, on getting her pops to cooperate.

And The Iron Bull, he needed the Inquisition to stay around for a long ass time.

Because he didn’t have shit else.

No Qun, no people. He was Tal-Vashoth—a true grey—a Qun-less qunari. Krem tried to make him feel better after it happened. Tried to make him understand that he’d been Qun-less long before his people sent assassins after him. There was wisdom in the words, a bit of sense. And a bit of solace, the alternative meaning losing the people that had cared for him better than any Tama.

But losing the Qun, losing his people, felt like losing his eye. It was always there, even when he didn’t notice it, when he took it for granted that it would always be there. And when it was gone, he felt the loss. A hole he had to cover up with smiles, with kisses to dark, spice colored skin, and words like ‘Boss’, ‘Other Boss’, and ‘kadan’.

There were only a couple of Vashoth in the Inquisition, the Aadar mage primary among them. But they were born Vashoth, they never knew the Qun, never felt a Tama’s lash or a Tama’s love. He talked with them, drank, and enjoyed the sort of easy camaraderie one feels when consorting with others of the same kind.

But it wasn’t quite the same. It would really never be the same again. The Iron Bull was alone, cut adrift.

Left alone too long with his thoughts and with his drinks, The Iron Bull started to itch—feel a tingle under slate grey skin that compelled him to move. To get out.

To escape.

Either into something. Or away from something.

Dorian, at times, served as that distraction—a numbness from the nebulous pain of being the lone qunari. But his new path as a blood mage unnerved him still, he’d never forget the image of white eyeballs turning red, or of every vein in his arm rising from underneath his skin, pulsing red with blood and magic. They were alright, he supposed. He still loved him better than he loved anything else in his life—even the Qun—but, damn, somethings take time.

The Iron Bull cast his glance about, searching for Dorian among the crowd of the well-dressed. He found Boss, standing next to her father; her smile pained and fake as Bann Trevelyan leaned in for an affectionate father-daughter embrace. The Iron Bull hissed, feeling a little bit of that pain—understanding what it meant to put on a false face. But that was her fight, and he’d let her fight that one alone.

A breeze blew in from the sea before a servant closed the window it blew from. The Free Marches held onto summer a little bit longer than Ferelden and Orlais. Night loomed, night beckoned. The tournament began tomorrow so the city partied tonight. 

Night loomed, night beckoned.

Bull muttered an apology to no one,“Sorry Boss, can’t stay here,” and pursued the night.

**

The city villas sat atop a hill, not quite unlike Kirkwall. Bull meandered down the hill away from glittering mansions, each one throwing their own posh and sedate celebrations for the Tourney come to town. The qunari up here carry weapons, body guards every last one. He scoffed before he realized that yeah, he too, fit that mold.

Bull wandered, aimless, looking for something he’d never find—a space that would fit him, body and spirit. A space like the empty hole awaiting the puzzle piece to fit it. The Qun always gave you a place, mandated for you, a space where he would always belong because the space was made to fit him and he was molded to fit the space. A Qun-less world stretched on and on, wide open with no edges to press against him, no space to fit. So he just slid loose, about and around, wandering down open streets until they got wider and wider and he realized; he wasn’t on the hill anymore but down in the morass of people not wealthy or important enough to attend a party in a villa.

The Grand Tourney was for everyone, celebrated by everyone, and everyone threw a party. The Low Market teemed with revelers in motley, wooden stalls lined the edges of the streets, hawkers barked cheap wares and cheaper food designed to be eaten with hands accustomed to grease and grime.

Iron Bull smiled. Not a perfect fit, but approximate. He could be comfortable anywhere, the same way the Boss could kick an ass at a ball or in a battle, but being in the marketplace settled a little more comfortably on his skin than being at Trevelyan’s ball.

He wandered. The food, even for his less than picky tastes, left much to be desired. Too little salt, not enough pepper, and too many variations on that theme. He’d negotiate his last good eye for hock of pork spiced in something a little hotter than table salt. But he was in Ostwick, he’d have to get all the way to Minrathous before he tasted anything spicy enough to make his eye more water than roll.

The partygoers didn’t seem to mind the lone qunari in their midst, the crowd composed mostly of humans and dwarves, sprinkled scantly with elves and devoid completely of his people. But then he turned down a narrow alleyway, feet moved completely by the press of the crowd and ended up in Par Vollen.

Two walls of tall wooden buildings pressed close on either side, businesses, homes, and shops. But between them was more qunari than Bull had ever seen since leaving home. Vashoth every one of them.

He walked down the alleyway, but they did not part around him, they fit to him, bumping and shoving, barely any free space to walk.

“Shanedan stranger.”

Even without collar, mask, or chain, Bull knew this qunari was a Saarebas. A thick knot of deformed muscle and bone sat higher than his head, hunching him over, forcing him to walk skewed sideways, one shoulder pushed far forward than the other. Yet even without the lingering evidence of the heavy weighted collar the Saarebas suffer for the glory of the Qun, Bull would know him as a Saarebas by the thin vertical scars that crisscrossed his lips, the healed wounds of a mouth formerly sewn shut. His eyes bore the same scarring and it was a small wonder that this man still had his sight.

“Shanedan.” The word tossed about his tongue, bucking an unfamiliar user. He hasn’t had need for a qunlat greeting in over a decade.

“You are dressed too nicely to be from here, and dressed too oddly to be an Ashafree.”

“A what?” Bull asked.

The Saarebas laughed, thick and watery, compressed lungs compressing his laugh into something short but still mirthful.

“You _are_ new, imekari. It is what some of us call those who flee the Qun, far better sounding than vashoth.”

His explanation was swallowed up by a swelling cheer and the tinny ring of mallets striking metal. Attention stolen, at the far end of the alleyway party a group of qunari, men and women, stood in waving rhythm, arms rising and falling in unison, beating on drums made of metal dimpled in different places to make different pitched sound. A great cheer sounded again, men and women throwing up their arms in celebration, others taking to the middle of the alleyway to dance; not the stilted waltzy turns they do at the top of the hill but full body dancing where the hips move far more than the feet.

Dancing may be one of the only freedoms the Qun allowed, rhythm and drumbeat deconstructing the carefully crafted walls of purpose and station. Stens dance, Tamassrans dance, Arishoks dance—and all together, moving and swaying and grinding to a steel pan’s bright warbling ring.

He smelled the food then.

 _Peppers_.

Orange and green, and dark bloody brown, stewing in spices Other Boss would probably die from the scent of. The men and women were dressed in ropes and cloth, tied and draped in a way that would make Dorian blush with the seeming innuendo of it, completely unaware that this was what the fashionable wore in Qunandar. He saw elves here, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, dancing the same steps. He saw them kissing qunari partners, and holding babes with pointed ears and budding horns. Former Viddathari, more at home among the ox-men rather than the knife-ears.

The Iron Bull opened both eyes of his sleeping soul, feeling the great heart within his greater chest pulling at a stitch of longing until it tore and bled openly. This was Par Vollen without the scrutinizing eye of the Qun. This was Seheron with all the comforts of Marcher finery. This was the best of the two worlds, The Iron Bull and Hissrad. The names settled on him and merged and he felt _whole_.

“Where am I salit-vehl?” He asked of the old Saarebas, wonder choking up his words.

“Judging from the awed stare, I’d say you were home boy.”

**

Courtesy mandated that new Ashafree relate their story and find themselves welcome and among family, the tale of escape and release stronger and more binding than blood relation.

He told them of his Chargers and how he paid for their lives with the loss of the Qun.

“You got the better deal.” Saarebas said. He did not abandon his old name upon fleeing the Qun. Many of them did not. The sweet woman who stuffed him full of her sesame cakes was named Khabbazad, her profession that of a baker when she lived in Seheron. Only upon the birth of her son, who sat atop Bull’s shoulders marveling at the length of his horns, did she adopt her surname Baker. There were scores of Smith the Smith. Healer the Healer. Dangerous Thing the Dangerous Thing. So much so that temperament and physical identifiers were used to differentiate between them all. Khabbazad specialized in her sesame cakes so she became Sweet Khabbazad. The butcher who insisted Bull take a hock of his choicest lamb became Generous Butcher. The Saarebas who greeted him and welcomed him home like a lost son was known to all as Saarebas the Scarred—and so on and so on.

Others shed their names, knowing them for what they were, designations, choosing instead to bear titles that better reflected their hearts than their occupations. He met girls named Rose, boys named Sky, and the mercenary laughed, recognizing the sentiment, remembering when he chose to leave behind Hissrad and become The Iron Bull—the cloak of his deception becoming Tal-nam –‘true name’.

“We could use a Bull of your horns around the Maskan. The bas leave us alone, but is good to have extra insurance against.”

He spent hours among the people, learning names that sound both foreign and familiar. They gave him Shokra-taar to wear and never before had The Bull ditched pants so gleefully when Dorian was not around.

“I can’t stay. I got business then we leave. But I’ll come back one day. I have to, I can’t live on the food down in the south.”

“Oh! The South! I have a sister-in-law in the Maskan in Denerim. Her cakes are not as good as Sweet Khabbazad but if you hunger for home visit there.”

“You mean I ain’t gotta take a ship if I want something spicier than a salt lick?”

“We are everywhere Ashafree.” When he spoke, Saarebas the Scarred’s words still came out half-growled, full phrases still odd on a tongue so long loosed in freedom. “Home never was so far from you.”

_Now_

Alexia counseled him against making a scene, but the look, the terror on her face that flashed for a moment as her father all but yanked on her arm threw that good sense out the gilded windows.

He strode forward, ready to make a fool of Gareth Trevelyan in his own home when Dorian stepped in his way, gasping.

“Maker save me you’re here!”

“Get out of my way!” Cullen tried to push passed Dorian but his friend turned his body in a twirl, as though dancing with the man.

“Dorian what!”

“That woman will not take the hint!”

“What are you talking--” Cullen spun him back around to get an eye on Evelyn again, still on the dance floor with the piece of nugshit who sired her.

Dorian misunderstood the motion and continued to dance with the man. “Evelyn’s _mother_! No matter how much I try to make this woman understand… what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get rid of you so I can tear that bastard’s heart out with my bare hands.”

Dorian stopped spinning with Cullen. “I don’t need to remind you why that’s a terrible idea do I?”

“I can’t bear to watch her like this, smiling in that bastard’s face! Smiling in _everyone’s_ face like she’s some kind of trained monkey I…” He carded a hand through his hair.

Dorian chuckled with no humor, smiling sadly for his friend.

“You get used to it. It becomes second nature. I couldn’t tell you how many times I danced with the girls to keep up airs, and some of them were really nice I’ll bet, while all the while I was pining after their brothers and uncles knowing that such a display would ruin my family and everything they worked for.”

“How? How could a person live like this?”

“The point is they really can’t. You either turn into a monster like Gareth, numb and blind to it. Or you run like she and I did. And find some place where you can live as yourself. Chin up, Commander. Those finely crafted shoulders of hers can carry a lot.”

**

Bann Trevelyan pulled his daughter close for a final embrace, smiling to his guests, urging them to continue their revelry while he retired to call on other friends throwing their own parties.

“You did well, child. I am most pleased.” His praise was laced with hissing poison. Her gilt mask of passive indifference shattered, revolting sickness overtaking her. He was too close. He could pull at her hair, or leave fingernail marks in her neck, and no one would notice the assault. “We will discuss your payment tomorrow morning before the opening ceremony of the Tourney. Wear your best in our colors for the Tourney. Summon your advisers. And meet me in my study at the ninth bell. Now kiss me goodnight.”

“Yes papa.”

“Do better child.” Gareth intoned, words low, the threat guaranteed.

“Yes _papa_.” She repeated, smiling, infecting her voice with false affection, the edges of her lips trembling in disgust as she pressed them to her father’s plum colored cheek.

Gareth released her, his wife taking his vacated arm and Vaughn showing up on Evelyn’s left. Both parents turned to see their son and daughter dip low in a customary goodnight curtsy. For show of course, their little play of the perfect family now complete.

Her teeth chattered as she watched her parents leave the Grand Hall for other parties, the large portrait of her broken family glaring down at her in condemnation. It was custom to stay, to watch as they departed, one last lingering tradition to honor before her thoughts, words, and body where her own again.

One of the worst beatings she ever took, came on the heels of such a tradition. Evelyn erred once, leaving before they were fully gone, before mother and father were completely out of sight. The next day, her father mauled her until he was breathless from the exertion, ensuring that his daughter always waited now until she heard the latch close on the doors of the outer Wing.

The old oak door slid home, its brass lock clicked.

Evelyn’s knees bent just so, the smallest most imperceptible dip before locking up in bone re-strengthened by her will. A quick practiced turn and she was on the dancefloor again, still filled with the mingling, the tipsy, and the drunk. She breezed past them all, every last partygoer, every last friend false and true. Cullen and Dorian stood waiting for her, the relief etched in their features shifting and re-forming into concern as she breezed past them both as though they nothing more than furniture or air.

Her servants parted the doors to the outside, duty more pressing than questioning their mistress’s intent or destination, and closed them behind her.

She fled.

Ready to race through Ostwick naked rather than spend one more moment in that house or in a dress tainted by her father’s touch. Dorian and Cullen shouted after her, but she willfully ignored them. Twisting and turning through cobblestone streets until…

“Boss?”

He was not dressed as she remembered, wearing something more contraption than clothing.

“Boss?” He said again, no longer questioning her unexpected presence but her health.

She answered him with a violent shake of her head, the coin bouncing at her throat.

“Sorora!”

“Evelyn!”

“Over here guys!”

The party in the streets hadn’t yet died, the crowds swelling more than they dwindled. Cullen and Dorian followed the echo of Bull’s shout and used his horns as an anchor.

“What happened? Is everything alright?” Dorian asked.

“You tell me. I ran into her and she hasn’t said two words in explanation.”

“Evelyn, I’m here—“ Cullen touched her and he shouldn’t have, she flinched from him, the contact like a heated brand. Body remembering to recoil when hands were raised too quickly, a trait learned from her father.

Evelyn felt covered in guilty filth, stained in shame, unclean and festering like an open wound. Every one of his touches she endured, opening an old gash thought sewn shut by time. She remembered every beating, ever curse hurled at her in anger and degradation, and instead of ripping his veins out with her teeth, she smiled back in his face and called him “Papa”. She let him dance with her, ignoring the screams Alphy, Alexia, and Maker damn her _Masan_ made at his hand. She swallowed his platitudes, choked on them, and asked for more, a bitch begging at her master’s table for scraps.

He was untouchable, and would remain so. For the Inquisition, for her people, for her beloved ones to survive she knew her pride was forfeit.

She didn’t realize she wouldn’t be able to bear the shame of it.

“Boss, talk to me Boss. Come on. Did he hurt you?”

“In no place any of you will be able to see,” Dorian answered, shaking his head. “Come now, amata, let’s get you back.”

“No!” She turned from them, shaking arms wrapping around herself in the only touch she could bear. “Not yet.”

“Tell us what you need Boss.”

Her voice struggled to climb out of the despair that stained it, they heard it in the tremble of her words before it straightened itself through her will alone.

 _You are the Inquisitor. And they are always watching._ Deep breaths didn’t calm her, didn’t soothe her racing heart. When hunters cannot fight, they flee, but where? _Where?_

“I need, I need…Cullen?”

He was at her back before the wind took the last syllable of his name. “Name it.”

“I need out of this dress. I need to not be _there_!” Evelyn’s arm shot an accusatory finger towards Trevelyan Manor. “Just for a little while. I need to forget him, I need to wash the taste of ‘papa’ off my tongue and forget I ever said it.”

Cullen did not know this place. His time as a Marcher was spent in Kirkwall’s cramped and filthy streets and the Gallows’ narrow hallways. Dorian was just as useless, never venturing this far east.

But the Iron Bull had the place to go and knew the cure for what ailed her.


	26. Block Party pt 2

The Ashafree did not question when The Iron Bull returned with his bas friends, familiar with the notion of rich folk ‘slumming it’ with the ox-men. Bull tried to explain their intent was a little less exploitative than that before realizing it was better to just shut up and let them take Evelyn’s coin; money she was more than happy to give away for a pitcher of Marass-lok larger than most dwarven beer steins and two of Sweet Khabbazad’s massively dense sesame cakes.

Kyaat the Tailor ushered her away, glad to trade one of her Antaam-saar’s for Evelyn’s silk dress, both convinced they were getting a better deal than the other.

“Bull,” Dorian started once Evelyn receded from earshot. “As much as I’d like to make snarky commentary on your new garb I find I can’t, breath utterly stolen from me by the particularly sinful cut of that…” The mage made a vague gesture indicating the top half of the Iron Bull’s body—wrapped and tied in red dyed rope, covered in black leather plates that fit snugly to his upper chest leaving everything else uncovered until the ropes that looped around his waist and hips holding up a breezy, comfortable pair of loose fitting linen pants. “Whatever you wish to call that.”

“It’s Shokra-taar,” Bull explained unbothered with further detail beyond that.

“And where exactly are we?” Cullen asked.

“A Maskan. Apparently it’s a settlement like an alienage, but for qunari. I never knew about them ‘till now. There’s food here. Real food. And music, and singing and it’s like being back in Par Vollen without all the rules.”

Bull only sounded like this, an overexcited wonderstruck child, when a dragon was nearby. The light from paper lanterns strung on ropes pulled between the two walls twinkled in the grey of Bull’s eye turning them silver instead of stormy, making him younger, smaller even, to Dorian.

That was Hissrad’s stare and his voice. This was an Iron Bull, Dorian never got the chance to meet. A Bull under the Qun but not of it, each foot in the best of both his worlds.

“I like you in it. Handsome.”

The whispered compliment turned Bull’s head down, meeting Dorian for the first time since they arrived in the Maskan. There was love in that eye, joy at this easy acceptance. Bull never worried about Dorian being repulsed, willing to take it as a given that the Tevinter would find all this qunari-ness distasteful. The joy that filled him at Dorian’s easy acceptance rivaled that of anything he felt that night.

Home and heart, neither needing to be sacrificed for the other.

At least.

For today.

The bitter liquor, the sweet cake, and the scratchy ropes of the Antaam-saar obliterated the memory of the ball. She emerged from the back of Kyaat’s stall smiling, steps still swaying, now from alcohol instead of shame shaken legs.

For the second time tonight, Evelyn knocked his heart out of rhythm, enough to make Cullen idly question lingering ramifications to his health. The Bull’s clothing was dyed black, Evelyn’s was cut much the same, yet instead of leather wrapping around her chest, she was draped in cool teal blue cloth. The fabric wound around her breasts, around to her back, held in place by a latticework of red ropes, both teal and crimson popping against the darkness of her skin. Skin exposed from the curve of her chest and down past her navel, her teal trousers sitting low on full hips.

Cullen was of split mind, the good part of him desiring to rip off his caplet and drape it over her shoulders, the bad part desired to figure out how to unknot those ropes, the worse part of him desired how to unknot those ropes and retie them in in more interesting configurations.

“My dear,” Dorian said, breathless with compliment. “Twice tonight you have shamed the Empress herself. Look at you both I’m far more inclined to submit to the Qun than I once was. Don’t you agree Commander?”

Jarred by the address, Cullen extracted his thoughts from the dip of Evelyn’s bellybutton and stammered a blushing reply.

Bull fed them food from the same stalls he visited. Introduced them to Saarebas the Scarred who nodded politely, pleased that The Iron Bull had come back sooner than expected. Sweet Khabbazad’s son squealed in delight at The Iron Bull’s return, asking with impertinent, grasping arms to be let up on his shoulders again.

Emboldened by drink and the heavy purse of coins on her belt, Evelyn pulled Cullen away from their chaperone, leading him blindly through thick crowds of qunari and elves, stopping them at every stall that caught her eyes.

Assan had friends in the Maskan, Viddethari and qunari alike. She brought her here on occasion, the presence of a Bann’s daughter lessened by the elf whose coattails she clung to.

“I learned to dance here!” She had to shout over the steel drums, ringing constantly, bouncing and reverbing off the brick. “Assan brought me here…

“What!?” Cullen asked with a mouthful of pepper stew he hadn’t swallowed yet because he couldn’t lest his insides burn away to nothing. She giggled, face brightening in her first genuine smile of the night. Cullen swallowed his attrition and asked again.

She answered him with another tug at his wrist, pulling him into the thickest part of the dancing revelers.

Then.

She moved.

His gut remembered the way she danced after The Temple of Sacred Ashes, before Coryphes rained red lyrium and terror from the sky. He remembered the need that surged in him, the desire for her, watching her sway her hips, jump and flex and ripple.

He watched from a distance then, hiding his covetous stare by propriety and an overlarge tankard of ale.

Now, he watched up close.

More than that.

She made him move with her.

The Andrastian in him revolted at the idea of his body moving in such ‘unseemly’ ways but the man in him was all too eager to let her hands settle on his hips and move them with hers. She pulled them flush together, hip to hip, close enough to make love were there no fabric between them.

The thought shuddered in him and rippled in her, making her pull him tighter, closer.

“Dance with me, Cullen.” She breathed then kissed him, taking his thoughts away when her lips pressed to his.

It was deceptively easy to learn steps where there were none to learn, the soldier in him used to marching in time to a drum’s beat. He modified that training, aided by her guiding hands, moving his hips back and forth in their sinful dance instead of moving his legs up and down in a march step. Unsteady hands learned boldness, rising from their roots at his side to drag up the exposed skin of her waist and ribs hitched gasps hrowing from rising fingertip. She hummed her approval, pleased that he did not shy from her. He danced with her to the frantic beat of drums and steel, his touch ablating the feel of her father’s unwelcome hands.

Here cultures clashed, bottled, shaken up, and spilled all over the alleyway. Elves, dwarves, qunari, and humans mixed, united by the singular purpose to enjoy the grandest party in the Free Marches. Bann Trevelyan thought of his daughter as nothing more than her title, uncaring that it was foisted upon her by tragic accident—granted by the blood of her dearest brother and so many other lives. He wore her on his arm like a trophy, her prestige somehow linked to his own, her achievements his benefits. A shiny thing, a finely crafted doll, to be dressed and presented like the finest of their stables’ horses, to be admired, and petted and envied before being locked away again to wait for the next event.

And Cullen was made to watch, impotent to all action, as the woman he loved greater than his Maker, was bandied about like livestock.

Not. Here!

His blood boiled. The feel of her pressed to him, the lazy liquor soaked smile on her lips, and the liberating beat of music they don’t make in Chantry sanctuaries drove him to desperate, loving madness.

Cullen turned her, bringing her back to his chest, lifting her arms to hook around his neck, emulating the motions of a qunari couple some few feet away. He watched them move then moved her the same, almost moaning when she turned her head to lay kisses against his neck.

He dared the Maker to damn him. Do it. Send him to the Void. See if he didn’t claw his way back through the Veil with his fingernails.

He wore a doublet, breeches, boots, belt, and capelet, but his skin burned her. The feel of his neck under her lips, and his bare hands sliding over the front of her stomach, it didn’t matter that he wore twice as much clothing as she did. She felt the heat of his flesh as though he wore nothing. Her sunlight, her gold, molten, melting, dripping into the holes Gareth, Corypehus, The Inquisition left behind in her. There was no more room in her heart for shame, filled overflowing by him. There was no word for him, no word of love adequate in any of the 4 languages she knew to describe what she felt. So she settled for breathing his name against his neck in time with the drums as they danced, ‘Cullen Cullen Cullen’—sounding very much like the beat of a heart.

Mages stood on the rooftops all across the city and as the Chantry bell tolled the hour, they let loose shocks and sparks of magical light and sound into the sky. The dwarves joined them, firing off rockets that exploded into color. The drums stopped, the crowed ceased shifting and moving, a wave of people suddenly stilled by the spectacle in the night sky. Golds and reds, and greens, burned in the air. Thunderous booms shook windows, scaring children and pets, and aweing everyone else.

Mages in the crowd let off their own magic, smaller in scale but no less impressive—localized demonstrations of dragons made of fire and dogs that sparked in light. Saarebas the Scarred, lifted a withered, gnarled hand and brought forth a glowing dragon that wove among the crowd, tingling gently, tickling with a benign caress of the Fade whenever the magic touched against skin.

The dragon snaked toward them, and Evelyn stilled, ready to gently block him from the magic lest it unsettle him but instead he took her hand, threading their fingers, bringing them to pet the dragon as it wove by.

Safe. Solid. Protecting. Proud.

They were fearless.

Stronger when they were together.

**

The servant let them in the side door, the four of them sneaking back into her house like delinquent teenagers after a night of unapproved revelry.

Dorian pulled the Iron Bull down the hall into their quarters while Evelyn pulled Cullen by the threads of their laced fingers up the grand staircase to her own. She stumbled, the Maraas-lok making clumsy work of her feet, pulling Cullen right down on top of her, right there on the stairs.

“I wonder.” She grinned up at him, eyes affecting an innocent look that was everything but. “If you remember what you told me about these stairs?”

She kissed him, doing absolutely nothing for his memory, tongue drawing slow circles around his own, pulling a moan from her he had to silence with a deeper press into her mouth.

“Quiet!” he groaned. “Won’t someone hear?”

“I am the mistress of this house. The Princess.” She rolled her hips against him, then rolled them again, her body an ocean and each wave of her hips pulling him under, drowning him. “And I thought you wanted the servants to watch, you brute.”

He bit the bottom of her lip to buy him some time to think, something made impossible by the voice she used on him. That smooth cultured, Marcher purr. The princess voice.

Cullen made a small noise, a moan. “Oh.” Then his grin curled around his face, a predator readying his strike.

He attacked her mouth, hands grasping at her waist travelling higher to the ropes around her neck. He ground against her, achingly hard now at the realization of where they were, who she was, and who he was supposed to be.

“Mm.” He growled into her neck, biting hard. “My princess.”

Evelyn cried out at both the bite and the deep vibrato of his growl. She mewled, opening her legs wider around his body, the hand grasping him at the back of his neck reaching for his wrist to drag his hand to where she needed him, her qunari garb not allowing for no undergarments, no smallclothes or breastband. She was bare under him.

He stopped at the highest part of her thigh, thumbing the cleft at her hip but reaching no further.

He had to gasp around her kisses, “Are you wet for me? For your Ferelden brute?”

“Touch me and see.” She panted.

He drew his hand closer, higher at the juncture of her thighs, brushing the curls on her mound, dipping, diving, delving close before pulling away.

Evelyn huffed, craned her neck and bit him in retaliation. “Please.” She begged, apologizing with her lips on the love bite.

“Princesses who don’t behave get nothing.”

The steps on the stairs dug into her back at regular intervals. The base at her neck, the middle of her back, and at the swell of her ass. No comfortable surface for lovemaking but Evelyn didn’t really mind, body too focused on the hand trailing teasing swirls around her wet cunt and the mouth nibbling at her ears and neck and chest.

His knees fit into the juncture of one of the steps, angle perfect for his hips and cock to grind into her. Still clothed, his desire burned but cooler, clothes numbing sensation well enough to allow him to keep his mind. But between the maaras-lok and the flimsy, and scantly applied cotton of the Antaam-saar Evelyn felt everything, driven mad by his touch.

“Please!”

A loud smack, his hand applied to her bare thigh and the perfect swell of her ass, rang out in the quiet. “Behave, princess.” He smacked again earning him a moaned shout for more, half hoping a sleepy servant did walk by to see. Hoping that they’d tell their master over his morning coffee about how the Ferelden fucked his daughter on the stairs of his Great Hall. The thought emboldened him, he stopped teasing and drove his fingers into her sopping cunt.

Evelyn shuddered hard, rolling closer into him.

“More.” She demanded, rising hips to meet his thrusts.

He slowed his hand, the plunge shallowing out into a softer slide as he withdrew completely from her. “Be.Have.”

He pinched her little nub, a pleasing shrieking gasp tightening her body like bowstring. “Please more.” She amended, fists curled in his doublet.

“Good princess.” The brute rewarded her, dragging long fingers up and down her slit, circling just right, just hard enough to make her rise her back off the stairs and further into his hand, edging her closer to bursting white hot oblivion. “Cullen.” She stretched the consonants of his name, crying them into his lips. And he returned her pleas for him with a sighed command for her.

“Come for me. Now princess. Right now.”

The princess behaved, body violently shivering against the stairs as her climax whited out the ache in her back and neck. She came screaming for him and he let her howl, making this their one act of defiance. Making unbridled love in the face of Gareth Trevelyan’s ‘respectability’.

Evelyn didn’t ease into that satisfied lethargy, rather she sat straight up, pushing Cullen upright. “Follow me.” She didn’t adjust the cloth around her breasts, letting them go uncovered as they made their way up the rest of the stairs and into the east wing.

He followed, knees sore, but the ache in his balls overwrote that pain. They stopped at gilded oak door that opened easy for them, the room beyond dark and unoccupied. A large, obviously Orlesian bed consumed nearly all of the room, the kind of furniture one needed a step stool to climb into. Doors flanked each side of the monstrosity, pulled closed and shuttered. A nightstand more gold than furniture framed one side of the bed. Evelyn reached in the drawer and struck a match, lighting a single candle on the candelabra that stood atop it.

The flickering light illuminated his eyes in molten gold, shaded half his body in the dim light. Her lust slaked, the hunger in her gut stilled.

“You.” She murmured, whisper quiet, unable to say much more. She moved from the nightstand to his arms, wrapped him up in hers, and breathed. “You.”

“Where are we?” He asked and she answered with a light laugh, pulling him into the bed large enough to sleep the entire Inner Circle.

“Does it matter?” An old plush horse rested on one of the pillows, she pushed him to the far side of the bed, turning its black button eyes away from them. He recognized the animal, something baby Evelyn cherished enough to bring with her to a portrait sitting.

“This is your room.”

She nodded, kissing the stubble on his cheeks. “Ours for the moment.”

“And that was?”

“Bucey. Faithful old thing.”

He glanced about between light kisses to see her vanity, strewn with discarded jewelry and a long red ribbon frayed at snipped edges. The room smelled old, dusty, shut up and closed to the world, but with her in it, it smelled only her. Notes of citrus, spice, and flowers saturated the sheets. Wood polish wafted from her bow, red wood bonded to gold, leaning in one of the far corners of the room. He smelled the faint damp and dirt of a dog, noticing a ragged pillow at the foot of the bed, Cousland’s honor place of rest.

He smelled her, her perfume, her want, and it filled him full.

She pulled a single knot at the back of her neck and the top of the Antaam-Saar pulled free completely. Again at her hips and the pants slid away.

Princess no more, Evelyn gazed up from her bed, in her safest place in her true home and asked sweetly with no voiced question.

I want you.

Always. He replied with no voiced answer.

He unbuttoned his doublet, deliberate in his slowness. “Eyes on me.”

“Never anywhere else.”

The red doublet, a reprise of his Halamshiral finery, fell away as did the cotton shift underneath. The twice looped belt around his waist untangled with little difficulty, fingers working the buckle, his eyes never straying from hers.

But her hands strayed, sliding down dark fleshed body to palm heavy breasts with raised nipples that she pinched and pulled lazily.

He groaned. “Evelyn.”

“Eyes on me.” She teased.

“One day I’ll take this damnable belt to your backside.”

Her mouth fell open in a whine and she stopped her self ministrations to look at him with naked lust. “Promise?”

Cullen kicked off his pants, smalls, and socks, boots already gone when they stepped…climbed into bed. “To you, I keep all my promises.”

In the breath after he was completely nude, Evelyn flipped him, pinning him under her, surprising him with her speed and the urgency of her kisses.

“Promise me a kiss then.” She grinned, vines spread on the sides of his face like a curtain.

He paid it.

“Mmm. Another one.”

He paid that one too.

“Are kisses all you want?” He pinched her ass before settling his hands on her hips, guiding her slickness to grind against his heat.

“What else are you promising?”

He thrust up, enough to bring his full length against all of her juicy cleft but not enough to fit home. “That.”

“You promise overmuch, pay tét.”

Again he sought to drive into her heat and succeeded this time, seating fully within her. “And it is no promise but a guarantee.” He punctuated his guarantee with another hard, body shuddering thrust, holding her still by the hips as he pushed.

They moaned in concert, lust singing sweetly with songs of flesh striking flesh. Cullen released her hips to let his hands wander, to let her body do the twisting and the writhing, eyes ever on his. Where he pushed, she curved,  her body arcing curves above him. The curve of her breast, her hips, and the curve of her spine as she rolled and rocked, taking all of him, and giving all in return.

“Ma wi!”

Her nails furrowed his thighs and stomach, turning pale flesh red. His chest tightened, body humming like a staff charged with electric fire, with magic. He felt magic. Hers and his. It strummed through him, every ounce, setting him afire. He roared for her.

“Evelyn! Maker!”

She missed his cry, rain in her ears, her vines pattering across her back like water on windows. Every slam down, impaled herself on him to the root and deeper until souls touched.

“Ma wi! Oh!”

Flesh slapped, bodies bounced. Throats screamed in disparate languages. They fucked, made loved and moaned for one another until the breath froze in his chest as her cunt squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

“Evelyn!”

He came in hard, thick spurts, the sensation touching off her own violent end, enough to knock the trade back into her tongue. “Maker please! Yes! Damn!”

She tipped and he caught her, pulling her off and around to nestle next to him, the both of them panting and giggling.

“Consider your promise fulfilled. Maker.”

“I told you I would.”

She crawled away from him, reaching for Bucey, turning him back around now that their delightful sinning was complete. “Don’t get smug.” She tossed the horse at him.

“Oh never love.” He caught it.

Evelyn lay down again, in comfort unknown to this bed, snuggled between a stuffed soulmate and a living one.

“Bòn nwit kòkòt”

He didn’t understand her, and she offered no translation, so he answered with the only word he knew.

“M’chere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucey is OF COURSE short for Bucephalus, Alexander's famous warhorse.  
> Ma wi: Oh yes  
> Bòn nwit kòkòt: Good night sweetheart


	27. Her Pride. Her Dignity. Her Love.

Leliana and Josephine chatted quietly in the study, their conversation stilling when Cullen entered the room, eyeing curiously the armed guards that stood at the back of it. 

“Enjoy yourself yesterday?” Leliana asked, her innuendo clear and blatant.

“Immensely.” He fired back, still too hungover on his love to be embarrassed,.

Josephine sat quietly, anxiety settling in her belly. This was what they came for, to secure the boon that would ensure the Inquisition’s survival. She prayed a litany over and over again that Lord Trevelyan’s price would not be too high.

The Inquisitor arrived, the last of the council, done up smartly, locs pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, secured with a brooch of a rearing horse, the twin of the one her Grandmere wore. She dressed in grey and gold, less dramatic than the dress she wore to the ball but no less striking. Long sleeves and a long ‘v’ cut neck that ended at the middle of her breastbone, collar trimmed in the pale yellow fur of an ermine—one of the first stoles she shot and skinned herself.

“Good morning, messers.” She bowed in the Marcher way left arm curled to bring a clenched fist over the center of her chest. All three nodded politely, putting their friendship and love for one another aside in favor of the dangerous waters they would now ply together as the leadership of the Inquisition. Spymaster, Ambassador, Commander and Inquisitor.

Gareth arrived at the last ding of the ninth bell, no doubt paused outside the door to enter at that exact time, a whore for such dramatics.

“Salut messers. Daughter.” Her father paused, opening his arms for a good morning embrace.

Evelyn smiled serenely, screaming in her heart as she closed her arms around him in a hug, leaning up to plant a kiss on his cheek as he expected.

Her father grinned, pleased by his daughter’s fearful shudder and the naked revulsion on the whelp’s face.

“Did you enjoy the ball?”

He exchanged the pleasantries of last night’s ball, the weather, and restful sleep, needling them all by avoiding the matter at hand for as long as he could. But once he was done with those exercises, Gareth smiled, fangs for teeth, ready to war with his daughter.

“As much as I’d like to continue these delightful talks, let us steer topic to more pressing matters. I am beyond joyed to have my beloved daughter here for the Tourney but I suspect you did not come for diversion, but for business.”

“Indeed not Papa. You’re quick enough to guess.” Evelyn answered, holding back the roll of her eye. They exchanged letters about this a fortnight ago, but Gareth played his Game and so too must she.

_You know fucking well why we’re here._

“Please, let me hear what you have to say.”

_Beg for it._

Evelyn gestured to Josephine. “Lady Montilyet, if you would.”

“Thank you Inquisitor. Lord Trevelyan, the Inquisition desires new patrons. The defeat of Corypheus has shifted fortunes, nobles convinced that the support they’ve offered in the past is now no longer needed. We mean for you to set an example to your fellows, impress upon them the knowledge that though the major threat is defeated, there is still larger work to be done. Work the Inquisition must do, and cannot do without their support.”

Gareth sat behind his desk, used for writing and bending over his paramours. He nodded sagely, though never met the Ambassador’s eye keeping them focused on his daughter, reading her for further weaknesses to exploit—though he already knew her greatest one.

“What would you ask for specifically, Lady Montilyet?”

“A kind word from you would worth its weight in gold.” Josephine smiled, knowing the loss would be hers should she bring up coin first.

Evelyn’s father chuckled softly. “I suspect, however, your needs are far more concrete than that. Say, actual gold?”

“Since you offer, such a gift we would not turn down.”

_Masterfully done, Josephine_. Evelyn grinned proudly.

“And what does this gold buy? Speak plainly.” The sharp suffix on his request bespoke impatience. Evelyn knew he was readying a strike or eager to be done with this entire farce. She balled her fists in her lap quickly before relaxing them. Josephine spoke airily, as though this meeting were a brunch among friends, but the situation was far more dire and Evelyn could not allow him to smell their blood in the water.

“Food, supplies. We must hire more soldiers for our armies and pay the ones we have. Soldiers are also required to protect our holdings and to maintain free and unobstructed trade between Orlais and Ferelden. The mages of our Circles require supplies. They look to us for their support. We need lyrium for our templar forces, support for those affected by dragonfire famine,…”

Gareth held up a hand, asking gently for silence. “I see. My daughter is a queen with all the issues of a realm. Very well. Her smile has convinced me to help, ever was I a slave to it.” Cullen rolled his eyes and Leliana coughed into her hand, the sound very reminiscent of the Orlesian word for ‘bullshit’.

Gareth pulled a sheaf of parchment from his desk, thick and bound by red string. He motioned for the Commander to rise and be his errand boy, to deliver the paper from his hand to his daughter’s.

“I have here a list of wills and loans, signed by my hand, endorsed to you, my dear daughter.”

Gareth gave that up too quick. “Papa?”

_The fuck?_

“Now now, little one, do not tear into your gift so eagerly.”

_Grovel at my benevolence._

Evelyn did not, instead she held the papers in her lap, folding her hands over it. Ignoring them.  “Papa. I am choked with emotion. What have I done to deserve such?”

_Your gifts are poison, what do you want for them?_

“Simple. I wish to enjoy the company of my daughter for the Grand Tourney, a pastime we have not enjoyed since you were a little nug.”

_You are my prize to show still, now the whole of the Free Marches will see you._

“Your generosity astounds.” Josephine tittered, faking her awe well, joining Evelyn in the battle.

_We both know you are bullshiting. A few appearances is not enough for your greed. What do you want?_

“My Lady Montilyet, do not be so quick to assume. Read the wills and see your questions answered.”

Josephine fixed a panicked stare to Evelyn who held in her fear quite well. Leliana and Cullen remained behind them, seated, letting the negotiators do what they did best.

Evelyn untied the red string containing her fate and read.

“17,000 sovereigns per anum. A bi-annual shipment dry goods and wheat from Grandmother’s fields in Soldeham. A yearly shipment of ore. Chateau du Cheval and all its adjoining lands and rents, those were Laia’s lands before she died. Gar–Papa, we could survive on a third of this. Thrive on half. All of this and we’d never need anything again.”

Gareth grinned, pleased, feasting on the mild panic in his daughter’s voice.

Evelyn passed the parchments to Josephine and snapped to her feet, scraping her chair against the wooden floor.

“You give nothing for free Gareth. What the fuck do you want, huh?” She forgot her courtesies, deliberately, nauseated and weary of this act. “Another chance to show me off? The continual chance to trot me out like something from the stables. Is that what you want? An opportunity to remind everyone who ever hated or slighted you that you bred the fucking Inquisitor.”

“My lady…Inquisitor….Evelyn…” Josephine shattered her tirade with the breathy sob of her name. “These wills, this loan, all of this…”

“Josephine?” Leliana rose to her feet in concern, crowding over Josephine’s shoulder.

“Ambassador?” Cullen too.

Her other advisers circled around Josephine to scrutinize the gifts Gareth laid at their feet.

“What? What is it?” Evelyn turned to face them as Josephine’s hands shook.

Gareth stood, rising like a sovereign from a throne, stalking around his desk, walking like a man ready to render judgement. Yet though he stood almost nose to nose with his child, he fixed his gaze on Cullen, unfurled the dagger in his mouth and stabbed.

“Those are not _gifts_. That is your _dowry_. And you will not see one red royal unless you leave this house a woman married to a man of _my_ choosing.”

Evelyn floundered for words, feeling frost spiked fingers close around her heart and stomach. She didn’t dare look back to her advisers, didn’t risk to see the looks on their faces which were various expressions of mild shock for Leliana, sad resignation in Josephine, and white hot blind fury in Cullen.

“You have never heeded me, you will now.” Now Gareth turned his fire limned stare to his daughter, almost dancing at the tears in her eyes. “Otherwise you will starve, your fields will lie fallow, and you will have your army in open revolt. Refuse this at the peril of everything you fought for.”

Cullen tolerated, pardoned, _forgiven_ blood mages. He lingered in the presence of a spirit in stolen flesh and found the company enjoyable. He was warm friends with a man who shepherded the Templar Order down a slow march to red madness and he turned his sword against templars who no more than a handful of years ago he would have promoted.

But nothing, _nothing_ in all thirty years of his life could prepare him for the seething, spitting, caustic, _hatred_ he felt for the man who stared him down, manic joy in his eyes, and took from him, with only words, the woman he loved the most in this world.

Cullen shifted on uneasy feet, hand flexing on the hilt of his sword, one bad decision away from murder.

“Fuck you.” She cursed, spoken tenderly, already mortally wounded before the battle even began.

Pride.

Dignity.

But _never…_

“I don’t need this. I can go elsewhere.”

“Go then.” Gareth waved a hand and Cullen almost screamed to see her flinch from the act, her body remembering how to protect itself from his abuses. He eyed the guards in the room, estimating what it would take to kill them and whisk her away, understanding now why they were placed there. “Beg prostrate on the doorstep of every house of note from Llomerynn to Monte-de-Glace. No one would touch you for your open defiance of the Chantry. Some might even kill you, seeking to take the scant riches you have for themselves. And trust me, I already know, it’d be _easy_ to do.”

“Father, Papa don’t…”

If he wanted her begging she would, ready to beg prostrate on _this_ doorstep at least. All shame she would endure at her father’s hand to keep Cullen’s love.

“Besides,” Gareth continued. “It seems as though you have no _seriou_ s suitors anyway. You should be thanking me. Saving you from your _lifetime_ of spinsterhood.”

That blow struck hard and true, Cullen cursed himself for his timidity, his hands gripping sword hilt harder.

“We…we shall have to think on this. We will need at least a fortnight to consider the kind offer.” Sweet Josie rose from her chair, the gentle touch of her hand on Evelyn’s elbow enough to keep Evelyn on her feet, the scraps of her dignity still mostly intact.

Until Gareth took them.

“The offer lasts as long as I remain in this room. Discuss it among yourselves in the adjoining solar. But Evelyn, your grandmother would like to speak with you. She is in her private chambers.”

Too stunned, she could only reply with a soft, “Yes.”

“Ah, my sweet girl, _remember your courtesies._ ”

“Yes _Papa_.”

“Good girl.”

The guards opened the double doors at the back of the study, the four of them filing out, bodies beaten ragged though no physical blow struck.

“A study, a study is where the Inquisition suffers its worst defeat.” Leliana gasped. “Evelyn…”

She walked from them, silent, offering no words or glances back as she departed to speak with her grandmother.

But Evelyn righted her spine, taking from her body the defeated hunch. Her fists balled, pressing her luck deep into the palm, willing the face of Andraste to be indelibly pressed into her flesh.

_You are the Inquisitor._

_You will find a way._

She threw open the doors to her grandmother’s apartments and disappeared behind them.

“Evelyn wait!” Cullen started after her but Josephine pulled him back.

“No Commander. We must discuss–”

“There is nothing to fucking discuss!”

“Yes, Josie, what is there to discuss?”

“The acceptance of his offer.”

“Josephine!” Leliana hissed, the suggestion sounding more like vilest blasphemy.

“You cannot be serious!” Cullen roared, startling a servant walking by with a breakfast tray.

“I am! Gareth is a snake, a vile and vicious creature, Maker damn him for what he has done to her and the rest of his family. Yet he is not wrong. We _need_ him. We _need_ this. All of this. Our resources are broken, our soldiers desert us. Too many restless mouths to feed and with the Circles? We are beyond capacity. We will fall. Apart. Without this. And I need _you_ to convince her of this.”

“Me? Convince her?” His teeth chattered in his mouth, his brow beaded with sweat, and his knees, at any moment, might revolt and give out from under him. He suffered no headache, withdrawal did not plague him today yet he would take a bout of lyrium poisoning over the rotting, aching _sick_ in his body now.

“I need you to tell her to take this deal. You are her beating heart, and for love of you, her will won’t break. She will deny him where we cannot afford such. This deal will protect the Inquisition, it will protect her.”

He struck his fist against his breastplate, the hollow metal thunk too grossly reminiscent of a hollow chest missing a heart. “ _I_ can protect her! You would have me name myself Betrayer!”

“I would have you do what is right!” Josephine spat back, casting her writing board to the floor, guttering the candle, spilling melted wax and black ink on the mahogany floor.

The liquids mingled.

They looked like blood.

“Your duty is to the Inquisition, to your soldiers. To the people under our protection. To your Inquisitor. You cannot, Commander, protect her with love alone!”

Leliana’s hood cast shadows on her face that obscured her tears. Cullen’s burning face dried his before they could fall. Josephine cried openly, so sweetly aware of what she asking a dear friend to do.

“Love cannot protect her from enemies that come without swords and shields. The ones who come with money and alliances. Who wield armies with the same casualty that you wield a chess piece. Love cannot protect her from that kind of power. I know this. Leliana knows this. But you don’t, and how could you? You’ve been raised on the halcyon stories of true love conquering all. On mages and templars, noble lady and farm hand. We have not, we know differently.”

“And what of Grey Wardens and Ambassadors?” Cullen reminded Josephine of the life Evelyn saved and restored. A cruel strike, and he knew it, but what else could a wounded heart do but lash and lash until something struck. “ _They_ seem to get happy endings.”

The slap stung, _hurt_. More because it came from Josephine than from any force she put behind it. “Cullen. I am engaged to a man named Lord Adorno Ciel Otranto. And we will be married in the spring of next year.”

**

Eartha Arnette Trevelyan, lay in repose, the same way panther rests, concealed in shadows unseen, unheard, and unexpected until fangs rip throat from neck. Equal parts age and lingering grief withered her once robust form. She could have passed for a paler woman if she wanted to, her skin fair and light, close in color to a sun kissed tan than her son’s deep obsidian and her granddaughter’s fertile brown.

Her fairness caused her much trouble in her youth, accused of misrepresenting or outright deceiving possible suitors to the true nature of her ancestry. Evelyn remembered sitting at this woman’s knee as she told stories of how her father, the Lord Trevelyan, prevented her and her fair skinned brothers from playing too long in daylight sun, for fear of browning them any darker than the ‘acceptable’ color of a burlap sack.

Grandmere Eartha carried the same resentment and hate Gareth did. She taught it to her child, reminding him to be wary in the presence of others, and to always _always_ remember that their actions; who they consorted with, where, why, and how would have ramifications for the entire family, no matter their insignificance. Gareth held that resentment, that bitterness, so close to his heart it poisoned him rotten.

“You wanted to speak to me?”

After Assan died, Eartha took up her residence in Soldeham. She was once a comfort, a sweetness in this bitter house. Perhaps she would provide that comfort again.

“Come here ‘tite fille.”

She reached for her granddaughter from her bed, arms open to accept an embrace Evelyn did not give.

“Too old to hug your grandmere?” She smoothed the comforter and patted it, the look in her soldier’s eyes still fierce despite her years, turning the request into a command. _Sit._

“Heart’s not in it.” She smoothed her skirts and sat like a proper lady.

“Judging from the slump of your shoulders and your inability to look your grandmere in the eye, I suspect your heart is in other places. Did your father offer his deal?”

“More like threat.”

Eartha sighed, the breath rattling in her chest, a rock dropped in an empty bucket. Evelyn did raise her gaze at this, sad stare made sadder when confronted with her grandmere’s fleeting mortality.

“Ah my son, I love him as only a mother could but he is such an ass.”

Hope sprung in her chest, “Are you going to help me? Are you going help me out of this?”

“No child. I cannot.” A hand that could barely crush parchment, crushed her heart. “I am going to tell you why you will take your father’s deal.”

Hope fluttered, gave one last lurch, and died.

“Ostwick is a city on a hill, in ancient ages the entire city was the hill. But the hill was not enough to protect the city and its people from the ravages of dragons and wolves, from the destruction of war with Tevinters and Qunari.

So the Teryn decided to build a wall. But none would come to build it. He sent messages from here to Tevinter, all the way to the tip of Rivain and beyond begging and pleading for builders to come and design his wall, promising a lordship, a place on the hill, for anyone who would heed the call.

None heeded.  
  
Expect us.

From Rivain, some nebulous forbear of ours packed a caravan with their family. And they came, trowel in hand, to build a wall. 

We built two. 

When the walls were done, the lords on the hill praised the work. The people praised the work. The Chantry praised the work. The city praised our work.

Praise was sweet, but you cannot feed a family with it. Nor can pride clothe the shivering, nor love shelter the homeless. We wanted what was promised. Our lordship. Our home on the hill.

And we were given neither.

When it rained, before sewers and drainage carried away water safely, water ran down the hill and collected in stagnant pools as its base, turning the soil to mud. People lived there at the bottom of this hill. Elves, qunari, the poorest of the poor, and anyone else deemed ‘unworthy’ or ‘unfit’.

When our forebear asked for their due, the nobles, the city, and the Chantry laughed. They pointed to the huts in the mud and said ‘Go, this is your prize. A Lordship of Mud. A kingdom to match your color.’

In the years hence we clawed and crawled and fought and bled and died in that mud. We gained wealth, prestige, we finally earned our home on the hill. And still, they mean to keep us in the mud.

No matter what we do. No matter our history, our achievements, they see no farther than flesh.

To this very day.

We climb and climb and climb up the hill, earning tiny victories along the way. But they call us ‘mudskin’ all the same and knock us back down the hill, building walls to halt our passage and that of others. You, my child, will now earn us our due. You have family, men and women and children, all their fortunes hinging on you. The walls that were built to block us, you will knock down, raze, and see none are built for those that follow after. With you, Inquisitor, we will now _own_ the hill.”

“Grandmere. It’s not… I am the Inquisitor. A mudskin is the Herald of Andraste. It’s changing. They can’t keep us back anymore. The Divine is also…”

“The Divine!” Grandmere reached into her nightstand and flung towards her grandchild a sheaf of pamphlets, startling her with the force of the throw. Evelyn picked one up, _very_ familiar with the content thereupon.

“Never! In the history of Thedas has the Maker’s Chosen been so disgustingly maligned! This shows that it is not enough for our kind. It never will be enough! We must be more, we must _always_ be _more_. Twice the work for half the spoils! It is not enough that she is the Divine. It is not enough that you are the Inquisitor. You will marry. You _must_. And you must marry well. And as such you will lift us all as you climb. As you _fly._ ”

No. She thought. She flew only one way. _He_ was the only person who could ever her _fly_.

Evelyn broke into a wretched sob that prickled the heart of grandmother. Hands yellowed and aged wrapped around her.

“Why do you sob, kòkòt? Why do you break my heart with your tears, hm? Do you cry for your heart? Does the horse cry for her lion?”

Evelyn sniffed, raising watery and red rimmed gaze to Grandmere. “You know too?”

“Of course I know. Your father is a fool. He pays men to tell him what I can deduce in a glance. I’ve never seen so fond a look in your eye than when its gaze landed on that man. He has your heart. He may keep it. No one is asking you to give him up. Maker knows no one in this bloody family ever gets to marry for love. It is better that you two are the worst kept secret in Thedas. Your husband will be prepared for the scandal that will inevitably arise. Perhaps even, he will be permissive of it. Have your legitimate issue, then sire his litter of bastards. It has been done before.”

“I could never do that to him! He deserves better than that! Better than to be some secret, something shameful, something kept behind a closed door and in hidden boudoirs. He deserves better than what you gave Assan! You don’t think I remember because I was a little girl, but I remember her begging, wanting to take the two of us to Clan Lavellan. She wanted to go home. She begged you to come with her, but you said no. That our family wouldn’t survive the scandal. That you had _duty_. But she wouldn’t leave you, she loved us both so much she couldn’t leave. Assan died for it, she languished for love, left with no strength to fight the fever that killed her.”

The panther struck, leaping from its concealment, Eartha vaulted forward in her bed, rising from her cushion, a snarl like growl emanating from her mouth.

“Do not speak of that to me again! She endured for me! For my sake! It was her choice!”

“Suffering for love is still suffering. It still hurts, still wounds. Not him. He should never suffer, especially not for my sake. I would protect him from that.”

Eartha relaxed, remembering what the healers told her of the pressure of blood in her body.

“Yes.” She sighed, body groaning with age.” You will protect him. You are a protector. You always have been. You protected Alphonse. You sister in law, your nephew. When you became the Herald, you protected mages, runaway slaves, you protected all of Thedas. Will you not extend that protection to your _family_ —for something so selfish as your own heart?”

She turned her gaze to her grandmother, and let the last of her tears fall. She gripped the woman’s forearms harder than what was proper and dislodged from her embrace.

Her father was a cunning, duplicitous, manipulative bastard. This Evelyn knew.

Though only now did she realize that was an inherited trait.

“You needn’t give me you answer, child.” Eartha continued. “Save it for your father.”

Aching with pain that had no treatment, Evelyn rose, curtsied, and left.

Soundless. 

With no goodbye.

**

“Advisers.” She asked impassively. She sat quietly, remembering her courtesies, in the chair before her father’s desk. Gaze firm in her lap on the thick sheaf of deeds, loans, and guaranties that would keep their Inquisition alive at the price of her heart. “What do you suggest?”

“You should accept the agreement, Inquisitor.” Josephine answered first.

“I agree.” Leliana next.

His silence stretched and pulled, a bandage molded to the drying blood on a mortal wound. Josephine was right. Without this, she would be defenseless. Utterly. Given to the mercies of greedy nobles and disgruntled soldiers. Her Circles would fall. Skyhold would fall. The world she built with her blood would crumble and cease to be. All the lives she saved, the lives that depend on her now, would suffer, some lost.

Maybe even hers.

Unless…

“I also agree Inquisitor.”

He ripped the bandage, his heart torn away with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kòkòt: sweetheart
> 
> And now the fun begins.


	28. The One that Got Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all your kind comments:  
> Thanks.

Gareth was a poor loser, and a poorer victor. His gloating smile induced a rage in all three of her advisers, even Josephine, the ambassador contemplating the effectiveness of a quill as a murder weapon.

 

“Ah, such a joy was never know. I get to see my little girl married! Worry not, dear child. In anticipation of your favorable response, your mother and I have planned your nuptials to commence at the conclusion of the Tourney.”

 

Typical Gareth, planning for all contingencies. Now she couldn’t run, disappear behind Skyhold’s walls to wait out a long and slow engagement.

 

“Am I to marry promises? Air? Who is this husband?” Evelyn asked, voice dry, flat, and emotionless.

 

Tranquil.

 

Gareth crowed even harder, his laugh warm and cruel. “I will send him here shortly. There will be carriages arriving to take us all to the Tourney grounds for the opening ceremony. He is a combatant in the Grand Melee, expected to win. Comport yourself, sweet, you look like a woman for the executioner's block, not the marriage bed.”

 

Gareth kissed his daughter, wrapping her in an embrace that would fool anyone into believing the sincerity of his affection.

 

“Ambassador, Sister, Commander. A pleasure.”

 

Cullen earned his fangiest smile, eyes gleaming, before he departed.

 

Her head dropped, the muscles in her neck relaxing as though indeed severed by a headsman’s axe. 

 

One breath. 

 

Two. 

 

A third. 

 

She took three seconds, three breaths to grieve. 

 

Then stopped.

 

Again, she righted her posture, building back weakened bones, each time easier than the last until she was assured that one day she would wake and find herself made of stone. One day she wouldn't feel the heartache because she wouldn't  feel . The thought, the  not feeling, made her smile. Grim, yes, but comforting.

 

She knew she would have to send him away, unable to watch Cullen shuffle on with broken heart or  heal his wounds with another's love. And he would heal, she prayed. Her sincerest hope would always be his happiness, his safety, and his health. 

Her mind ran from her, calculating, planning, deciding…. acting .

 

“Leliana. Josephine.I am sending the Commander to assume leadership over Suledin Keep. Cassandra will take over his duties at Skyhold until we can shunt our new recruits there.”

 

Leliana made a small noise, gathering the courage to protest before Evelyn silenced her. “Thank you, ladies, for your service. May we have a moment?”

 

Leliana answered with a swift swish of her robes and the click of an opening door. Josephine made a small conciliatory noise daring to touch her, heart breaking at Evelyn's small and frightened flinch. Growing bolder, Ambassador Montilyet lifted dropped chin bringing their eyes to meet. Silver glass met amber and there was a look of understanding, of commiseration. She did not cheapen the moment with needless words of sympathy, choosing instead to fish a tiny wooden griffon from her pocket while she grasped the hand that held the other woman's luck, the coin of Andraste resting in its home in Evelyn's right palm.

 

“We will carry pieces of them always.” Josephine whispered, words only for their ears and their hearts. “To serve when we cannot hold them whole.”

 

“Josie?” Evelyn gasped, understanding writ plain on her face. “When?”

 

“Spring. I received word shortly after you brought Thom back.”

 

“Is he good?”

 

Josephine only shrugged, her smile exquisite in its sadness. “I only know his name.”

 

The room emptied, leaving the two lovers alone.

 

His murderous rage cooled, a forge heated sword dropped too quickly in icy water, shattering into broken splinters. He stepped toward her, arms open, ready to somehow kiss the sanity back into the world but she stepped back with a firm single shake of her head.

 

“Don’t do this, Evelyn. Do not send me away.”

 

“I won’t make you watch this tragedy.”

 

“You aren’t making me, I  choose this.”

 

“Fine.Then don’t make  me have to watch  you suffer.”

 

“Let me stay. Please.” 

 

She was right, he would suffer watching her. He did not want to watch her with a man she would hate...or worse...come to love. Didn’t want to watch that slow inexorable descent into something resembling affection, or watch the light choke itself out of her eyes, smothered dead by duty.

 

He didn’t want to watch her belly grow with children that should have been his, children with her smile, but none of his face. 

 

“You have to go. You won’t forget me if you have to keep watching me. And I ain’t gonna have you suffer for my sake.”

 

Ready but unwilling to let go he asked, “Is this what you want?” 

 

“No, but what I want is largely irrelevant at this point.”

 

Faith sustained him, kept him whole many times in his life. With her as the Herald of Andraste, and he as her not-so-secret lover, the comparisons between them and Maferath and Andraste lingered. He always wondered idly, when he looked at the images of the Passion of the Bride, what would cause a man to betray love?

 

Duty, he thought ruefully.

 

And know he knew how Maferath felt, and why he did what he did.

 

She smiled at him, warm but distant, caught in the fond memory his touch at the Maskan as they danced, lost in green glow of the magical dragon they touched together. Hours ago those were living moments though now, they were memories long passed. 

 

“Commander.” She said, still enjoying the fit of the word on her tongue. 

 

“Inquisitor.” He responded, growing his own bittersweet smile for her. “So, Suledin Keep?

 

“Ships leave the harbor almost every hour that will take you across the sea. I will send an escort with you. After the Tourney, you’ll have about a fortnight before we return, that should be enough time for you to settle your Skyhold affairs. I apologize. It is Orlais. I would keep you in Ferelden if I could but we have no suitable keeps in the country. I wouldn’t send you to Crestwood, it’s nothing but a damn bog.”

 

“Evelyn…”

 

“It’s cold in the Emprise. I’ll send the builders to refit the keep, one of the deeds is for a nearby Chateau. It’s yours.”

 

“Evelyn...” She kept going, barreling through, momentum keeping the pieces of her together, knowing if she stopped that she’d fly apart in the stillness.

 

“Once construction is done on Circle Skyhold, I’ll send Samson to you as your aide de camp. You’ll need him to get you through the lyrium sickness, you’ll help each other with…Tea, tea also helps, and my hair oil, I’ll have the chandlers make a box of candles of it for you.”

 

She ripped the ermine stole off her collar, pale yellow and silver, the colors of her house. She shoved it into his hands unthinking, going and going and going.

 

“It’s cold in the Emprise.” She repeated, forgetting she’d made that point before. “This will keep you warm until the builders come Harrit’s apprentice will be your armorer we’ll conduct war meetings every other month more if you think we’ll need it, less if you don’t…give your siblings my apologies for sending you farther away from them and…”

 

“Evelyn. Cecilia.”

 

Her commitment to numbness faltered. She weakened, momentum carrying her forward long enough to vault her into his arms.

 

“Maker’s Fuck! I love you, you stubborn, beautiful, wonderful, fucking… Maker damn you  come here. \--” With her anchored hand she pulled on his chin, bringing their lips to meet in a kiss that both knew to be their last. 

 

“Evelyn, I am so sorry.”

 

“Don't. It's alright. We both chose this. It is the right thing to do.”

 

“Be good, be sweet, be  safe .” He murmured into her mouth, one hand tender on her cheek, the other in her hair, fingers twining in the thick curly roots, taking in her color, her texture, and her  sound at the last.

 

“This is the right thing. This is the right thing. We both chose this.” She kept kissing him, breathing him, willing her lungs to fill with gold.

 

“More the fools are we.”

 

She laughed, a slight and fragile thing, yet even that, something so soft it could barely be heard outside the cage of their bodies, stilled silence in him.

 

“Will you be okay?” He asked.

 

“I don’t have a choice.” She put her palms on his chest and pushed, breaking contact before they lost their nerve, the courage to separate.

 

Duty filled the arm’s length distance between them, insurmountable, as though the Fade and the Veil and the Void occupied the space.

 

She curtsied. “Commander.” The word no longer fit her tongue, soured, bitter.

 

He bowed. “Inquisitor.” Departing with no smile.

 

**

 

He left her in her father’s study, closing the door behind him, wandering through halls that bled together, blurred by stubborn tears that seemed to well and well but never shed.

 

He turned down one hall searching for the exit, walls pressing against him, choking him. He knew he was hopelessly lost turning around, retracing his steps, trying to find his way back to the study and try again.

 

**

 

She should have returned the coin, damnit! Rising from her heap of lonely grief, she stood, ready to chase him down and return luckless luck when the doors to the study opened.

 

Her father. 

 

Accompanied by a man who froze the whole of her.

 

He'd been tall, gangly, he always towered over her even when they were children. That's what felt so right about him, they had known each other since infancy. 

 

He was still tall, though not so gangly, filling out the awkward scrawniness of youth with muscle and fat. He wore armor and a shield on his back. His breastplate emblazoned with the red and white double walls of Ostwick, the device of the Teryn and his family, the blue crown in the corner, indicating he was the first son and heir—the Terynling.

 

Memory twisted by hurt made him more sinister in her mind. His dark eyes were shaded in cruelty, his full mouth twisted in a sneer. His hands were claws that pawed at her during their first fumblings in the dark when he took her love, given on the promise of wedded bliss, before sneering and casting her down the hill to wallow in the mud.

 

Mudskins are not meant for marrying.

 

He smiled warmly now. Warmer still when he stepped forward and offered his hand.

 

“Evelyn!” He had to reach for her hand, she did not give it freely. There was no way in  eternity she would ever give  this man her hand freely. He kissed it, unminding of its frosty, fear stricken chill. “It is good to see you again after so long.”

 

Gareth seemed pleased, mistaking her speechlessness for some kind of awe, blind to the fear in her wide eyed stare.

 

“I meant to make my introductions at the ball, yet alas, I had to prepare for the Tourney. I will make them now. Andreas Hanz Ostison, at your service, my lady. I do look forward to having you as my wife.”

 

**

 

Cullen watched, hidden behind the half-closed door to the study as Evelyn stiffened, her face slack, mouth almost hanging open in a wide gape of shock. He saw her fingers grasping for something behind her, looking for a sturdy piece of furniture to lean against lest she fall over.

 

She was scared.

  
This man, on virtue of nothing more than a smile and a kind word,  scared her.

 

“Are you lost messere? Looking for something?”

 

A servant, a small girl, tugged at his surcoat. “I can help you.”

 

“Who is that man in there, with Lord Trevelyan?”

 

The girl peered through the crack in the door before pulling back in surprise. “Oh!” She clamped a hand over her mouth when Cullen warned her with a grin and a finger over his lips for quiet. “That’s the Champion of Ostwick!” she whispered. “The Teryn’s son. They say he’ll win the Tourney for sure!”

 

“Yes, but what is his name?”

 

“Ansel…no…Andrew…Andreas! His name is Andreas!”

 

Cullen felt touched by the Hand of the Maker, more like His Fist, crushing the air out of him in a violent shudder.

 

He remembered that name.

 

**

 

At a loss, completely and utterly, Evelyn floundered for words. Until this point, the identity of her betrothed was never an issue or a concern. He was just another noble to handle, to mollify or impress, to juggle like the rest of them.

 

But Maker, not him.

 

Anyone but him.

 

“My daughter is overwhelmed.” Gareth said, smoothing over the silence that tipped into awkward places. He squeezed her arm and she flinched, her skin screaming at the contact or… was that an actual…? “Clearly she is beyond honored by such a match. Two long lost lovers, together again. I’m sure once the shock has worn off she will  remember her courtesies. ”

 

Gareth squeezed again, and words tumbled from her mouth beating out the grunt of pain. “It…it is good to see you again.”

 

Pleased, Gareth let her go.

 

**

 

“Messere? Is something wrong?”

 

Cullen bit his lip to bleeding watching her with those two snakes. He cried out when Gareth touched her, seeing the shiver of pain run through her when he squeezed. He would put that bastard in his grave if offered the chance, by the Maker and all the martyrs he would. 

 

And Andreas—the first man to hold her heart and the first to break it. Cullen meant to leave her, board the ship at the harbor, make his way to Skyhold then on to his new appointment, unable to watch her with another man but confident she would be alright. Any man her father chose for her she would undoubtedly handle, possibly even care for after a time.

 

Except this one.

 

“Messere? Can I go now?  I’m going to miss the Tourney.”

 

Cullen made a promise once, an errant thing said to comfort the woman he loved. He made another one too, a promise duty sundered, but now, even at the risk of insubordination, at the risk of his heart and his pride and his sanity—

 

He would keep both.

  
“Can you show me the way to the Tourney grounds?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	29. With A Little Help From My Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some non consensual touching happening. I apologize.

Where is the Commander? He’s about to miss the opening ceremony.” Dorian asked. “And for that matter, where is Evelyn?” The Tournament grounds were situated in an open field at the bottom of the hill not far from the famous double walls of the city.

“Lord Trevelyan is the Sponsor. His family will sit in their special booth overseeing the Melee.” Rainer pointed to a wooden structure, a wide booth, built to accommodate a grandmother, a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law. Only a grandmother, son, daughter-in-law, husband, and wife, occupied the booth now making Dorian wonder how Evelyn got away with missing the event. The Mistress of Ceremonies was a jovial looking woman, accent thick enough to cut through with a knife as she explained the rules.

Dorian was having a hard time understanding her and wouldn’t dare ask another Marcher to explain for similar reasons, relying instead on Rainier.

There were various events. Archery contests judged on difficulty and accuracy. Mages competing against one another to see who could call forth the most impressive display. There were equestrian tournaments, jousting and juggling, but all of that paled in popularity and prestige to the Grand Melee.

Challengers from everywhere; Nevarran dragon hunters, Orlesian chevaliers, Dalish hunters, Qunari Stens, Legionnaires of the Dead, Grey Wardens, Seekers, Templars, Mages, everyone and anyone who possessed or thought they possessed extraordinary martial skill competed in the Melee for the ultimate glory.

“Lady Trevelyan will be with her family in the Sponsor's Booth, the seat of honor in the Tourney. The winner of the Grand Melee is named Grand Victor. Some say the distinction is only second best after being named a city’s Champion, I wouldn’t know, though I’d say being my lady’s Champion is distinction enough.”

He squeezed Josephine’s hand, hoping to banish the sadness that seem to suffuse her skin—a mood she’d been in, silent to its cause, all morning.

“It’s all terribly romantic. Knights and Tourneys and Victors.” Cassandra gushed to Varric “Will you write about it?”

“Nah, too passé.” Varric shrugged, laughing off Cassandra’s disgusted snort. “But speaking of knights, where’s our Knight Commander? Haven’t seen him all morning.”

“I suspect you won’t.” Josephine said, speaking her first words all day.

“Oi. Whatcha mean Commander Lionpants ain’t coming?” Sera sat on the Bull’s shoulders, munching on a treat of heated sugar spun around a wheel until it turned into a sticky sweet fiber. She tore half of it off its paper cone and handed it to Cole.

“Glinting, glittering, glossy. He is her gold, but she is poor now.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen. Presenting your sponsor for this Grand Tourney, Bann Gareth Leandro Trevelyan!”

“Boo! Boo!” Sera hissed loudly, throwing her confection. With no hope of hitting the object of her derision, it instead floated and landed in some poor woman’s hair unnoticed.”

“My friends,” Bann Trevelyan announced. “On this most momentous occasion I have even more joyful news to share!”

Josephine whimpered softly, clutching Rainier’s arm, shamed and guilty she still could.

For now.

“My lady what is wrong?”

Gareth continued, bellowing in his deep tenor from the Sponsor’s Booth, his mother standing resplendent next to him. “It is my great honor to announce that my darling daughter, the Inquisitor and Herald of Andraste is to be wed at the conclusion of this very tournament!”

An earthquake of shock leveled all the members of the Inquisition.

“Oh!”

“What!”

“Hey! Boss and Other Boss! Alright!”

“Lionpants did it!”

“Way to go Curly!”

“They got engaged and didn’t tell me! I'll skin her alive!”

The Inquisition’s cheers, though, died, when a woman walked into the booth escorted by a man decidedly not the Commander.

“May I present the Inquisitor Lady Evelyn Cecilia Renee Marie Trevelyan Herald of Andraste and Andreas Hanz Ostison—Champion of Ostwick, the future Teryn and Teryna of our fair city!”

She looked so brittle her knees nearly snapped when she curtsied to the cheers of the crowd, save one tiny contingent of nine people who stood there in devastated silence.

Dorian raked his fingers down his face, the name instantly recognized. “Oh no. Him?! Venhedis!  _HIM?_!”

“Oh Maker!” Cassandra gasped, clamping hands over her mouth.

Cole sniffed. “Chilled, choking, trapped. She wants to escape, but she chose the chains.”

“Josephine, dear.” Dorian tried to pry her face out of Rainier’s shoulder, sobbing hard enough to wet his padded tunic. “What in the Void happened this morning?”

“This was the price.” Leliana answered, hood drawn low over her face. “The price to save the Inquisition. One we  _all_ decided she must pay. All of us, the Commander and Inquisitor too.”

“And where is he now!?” Dorian screeched as the preliminary round of 32 began, initiating the slow march to the Melee finals. “Did he just run away? Unable to see that she’s been left with that  _bastard_!”

“We know this bloke?” Sera’s legs dangled, heels digging into the Iron Bull’s chest. “Can I stick a jar of bees in his metal shirt?”

“We don’t know him, but Sorora does. Let’s just say it involves broken hearts and slurs not even I’ll utter.”

“But….but he is the Commander. He is  _her_  Commander. He wouldn’t just leave.” Cassandra sputtered, defending the honor of her friend, incredulous that he would just up and abandon his duties.

Iron Bull set Sera down from his shoulders, she threw cotton candy in her anger, he might accidentally throw her. “So he runs then? Tail tucked between his legs like a damn dog!?”

“Enough! All of you.” Leliana silenced them with a rare shrill shout. “It doesn’t matter! They both made their choices. The Inquisitor has done her duty, and when we leave here, we will leave with the resources we need to ensure that we don’t all starve. That her Circles remain intact, and that her army doesn’t mutiny en masse. Our goal for this expedition is accomplished.”

“But at what price?” Cassandra howled.

“A relatively minor one. Just a pair of hearts. Hearts that knew not to put desire over duty.”

“But does he know?” Dorian pressed, panicked anger surging through him, incensed further that no one seemed ready to take up swords the way he was ready to take up staff. Ready, willing, and more than able to tear Andreas Ostison apart. “Does he know the viper he’s abandoning her to?”

“He didn’t abandon her. Lady Trevelyan dismissed him from Skyhold.” Josephine answered. “He will command from Suledin Keep now. She probably doesn’t want him near, doesn’t want him to see, to be tormented with…Maker this is terrible!”

“Ruffles, I agree.” Varric, looking as dark as his smirk would allow. “This has got to be the biggest shit show in the history of shitty shows and I lived in Kirkwall during the Qunari Invasion  _and_  the Rebellion. But if you think there’s nothing we can do, you’re wrong. Viney,” He pointed to the Sponsor’s Booth, at the Inquisitor, at their friend, who sat listing in her chair, a ship about to capsize, sink, and drown. “She’s gonna need us to help her out.”

“No Varric.” Leliana cut across him with a slash of her hand, brutal and final. “The deal is already done and made.”

“I’m not talkin’ about that. Stone knows we can’t fight against the greater good but there are other ways we can help. And how do you help a woman with a broken heart? Seeker?”

Cassandra thought, then Cassandra smiled.

“Exactly,” Varric cocked Bianca. “We make her smile.”

**

Assan never took her hunting until she was strong enough to wield a bow, but long before that, the elf made the forests around Ostwick her second home.

She remembered when they once came upon a huge stone wolf. Evelyn shrieked, hiding behind her caretaker, convinced the animal would lunge at them, snapping huge jaws around them both, consuming them in one swallow.

“Why do you fear, vhenan? True, the Dread Wolf is fearsome but you need not recoil such from a statue.”

“It’s a wolf! It’ll eat us!”

Statues, to her, were merely the living encased in stone. Her childlike imagination conjured images of a bloodthirsty wolf sitting quietly as the rocks from the forest bonded to him, firming flesh into granite in a position of permanent rest until tasty elves and their tastier charges walked by to rouse its hunger—neither arrow nor dagger able to pierce its unfeeling stony skin.

Indestructible.

Evelyn knew better now, but the memory provided some comfort. Every place Andreas touched, she willed to stone. Unfeeling. Hoping that this would kill the lingering crawling, creeping feeling of  _infestation_  his touch left behind in her. Corpse worms wriggling just under her skin.

Alexia’s hand on her shoulder did far more than her fanciful imaginations, a warm gesture matched with a sad smile.

“You were always the survivor.” She murmured as the two fighters battled the other into submission, Andreas and a hapless chevalier poorly matched for Ostwick’s Champion. “You will survive this.”

“I don’t think I want to.” Would Gareth revoke the offer on the occasion of her death? That possibility was far too likely to consider that option. “Alexia, don’t you get sick of surviving? Don’t you want to live?”

“I do live. I live for Masan, and him alone. I would do anything for him, and I am so happy he is safely away in the Circle. My prayers were answered.”

“Why don’t you leave then?”

“I have grown used to my cage, it is still gilded though tarnished. And I stay for him. With your new Circles, I will convince your father Masan can still inherit despite his mage status. Can you imagine? A mage, head of House Trevelyan?” Alexia smiled fondly, imagining her little man crowned the Trevelyan diadem.

Protected and powerful.

Finally.

“Your children will inherit the March. Terynlings.” Alexia offered, as though she had any understanding of the desires of Evelyn’s heart.

 _The forest is always greener on the other side of the Aravel, vhenan._  Assan whispered from somewhere lost.  _You have power you don’t want, she wants power she doesn’t have._

“I’d rather they be crowned in curls than gems.”

“We must play with the hand dealt.”

“I’m sick of the game.”

The crowed oo’d, responding to a brutal strike from Andreas that severed the chevalier’s shield from his grip. The knight capitulated to jeers and polite claps. 

“The winner! Your Champion!” The crier raised Andreas’s arm, he bowed, blowing a kiss to the booth, unaware of his fiance's stiff reaction.

As the two fighters exited the battlefield, two more took their place.

“Ladies and gentlemen for our next bout--”

A crossbow bolt skewered the parchment in the crier’s hand rendering it unreadable.

Gareth swore a foul oath. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I gotta tell you Your Lordy Sponsership, never let an amateur do a professional's job.”

The Sponsor’s Booth turned to face the speaker, a dwarf with more sun blond hair on his exposed chest than on his head, a crossbow held tenderly in his hands, more dear than a lover.

“Lords and Ladies and everybody else who’s ass ain’t sitting on a cushion!” A raucous cheer rose from the majority of the crowd. Varric preened. “Took that line from a fellow writer friend of mine, always kills. Anyway. Name’s Varric Tethras and I have a dear friend who’s feeling kinda down today. So I thought, with the help of some of my friends, we might cheer her up a bit.”

The crowd cheered, some exploded into squeals recognizing the name of perhaps the most famous fictionist in Thedas. Gareth stayed his command to the guards. The people watched and enjoyed, he would earn their ire if he had the dwarf removed. He wanted a spectacle, he certainly  _paid_  for one, so for now the dwarf could remain. He flashed a dark look to his daughter who showed her first emotion other than stony passivity. Eyes wide, a thin smile pulling up the corners of her mouth, like a flower finally blooming under the warming, comforting rays of the sun.

“So, your next fight will unfortunately not be....let’s see who’ve we got here.” Varric unrolled the updated Melee roster. “Ser Standiman against Lady Matchstick. But for your entertainment, Lady Matchstick will get to ply her tricks of the flame against our number 1 necromancer, The Terror from Tevinter! Dorian ‘my moustache wax is worth more than your life’ Pavus!”

The crowd had absolutely no idea who this Dorian Pavus was, but by the volume of their cheers, one would think him a hometown hero.

Dorian strutted, because there was no other word adequate to describe his swishing hips and arcing staff, swinging purplish wispy magic in its wake. He grinned at the Lady Matchstick and the fire that burned at the hem of her robes.

He bowed at the Sponsor’s Booth, blowing a kiss to his dear friend the Lady Susanna intercepted with a breathless little smile and coquettish wave.

“Really?” Dorian groaned. “How could she not know by now?”

“Alright you two, first one to scream loses. Begin!”

The fire mage screamed with the first spell. Dorian inflicted horror upon her, painless of course, but inducing in the poor woman such a terror, she shrieked and ran from the field before the match could be officially ended.

Varric declared Dorian the winner, assuming control as the new crier, the Master of Ceremonies harboring no real objection to his hijack.

Talent recognizing talent and all that.

Cassandra followed in the next bout, easily beating Ser Standiman into submission, spouting silly lines of poetry Varric fed her from the sidelines. Evelyn laughed breathlessly as Cassandra sputtered syrupy purple prose between sword blows.

Cole did not fight, instead the boy snuck into the Sponsors Booth, filling Alexia and Evelyn's lap with every kind of sweet confection before Gareth had the guards chase him away. He still came back, much more stealthy, the guards always forgetting to chase their quarry away.

Varric didn't fight either, choosing to provide commentary on every fight, insulting a favored opponent and making the crowd cheer for the underdog. More than once, at his sideline urgings, that underdog became the favorite, then won.

He made a killing in the odds pool.

Rainier strode into battle wearing his lady's token, a gold and blue sash tied securely around his wrist. He made his opponent surrender in one of the faster battles, pinning them in a headlock in the mud, when they had the nerve to cut the sash from him in a deliberate and malicious strike.

The Iron Bull fought a fellow reaver, a dwarf draped in dragon hide, dragon scales, and dragon bones. Rather than fight his enemy, the two dragon enthusiasts surrendered together, ending the match in a draw, so they could grab some ales and trade stories about dragon hunting.

“Ladies and Gentlemen for our next bout we’ve got…let’s see ….Oh…Oh!” Varric grinned and rolled up the roster. “I’m not going to introduce the next bout of fighters.”

“Hey!” A knight shouted from the sidelines, lifting his visor. “What gives?”

Varric shrugged. “Next up to fight is that guy!” Varric pointed to the indignant knight and walked from the middle of the field making no introduction for the other combatant.

Because he didn’t need one.

From the left of the field, the fighter emerged, lion’s helm donned, its mouth open in a roar to reveal determined guise. His sword glittered in the afternoon sun, set aflame in sunlight, the Blade of Mercy struck against Evelyn’s heart.

The Commander strode onto the field with no fanfare, even his companions struck dumb by his presence.

He pointed his sword towards his opponent then tapped his shield.

The fight began.

He fought.

And he won.

**

“What in the Void! The everloving, blighted...” Dorian devolved into a fit of Tevene swears as they crowded around him, the entirety of the Inquisition. Judge, jury, and executioner every one.

“How could you let this happen? Do you know who that man is?” Dorian sputtered as Cullen peeled off his helm, running a hand through sweat damp curls. Yes his helmet was an impressive piece of work, formidable in craftsmanship and imposition but it was dreadfully, brutally hot under the metal and fur and so he wore it sparingly.

“Yes I know who that is, Dorian. The one who…the one who hurt her from before.”

“Yes! How can you let her marry such a brute?!”

“I’m not letting her do anything. It’s her choice. One she made for the greater good.”

“You mean sacrifice!” Dorian sniped back.

“Yes, that too.” He sighed.

“Wait a minute! Josesphine mentioned you were sent away, dismissed?”

“To Suledin, yes.”

“And you came back to stop her right?” Dorian seized the Commander by the shoulders. “You aren't going to let her marry the monster who broke her heart first?”

Cullen pulled away. “I can’t stop her. I’m not fighting to win her, you don’t…she’s not a prize. I’m not fighting over her like some dog over a bone.…I’m just fighting to stay. To keep a promise I made to her.”

Dorian and Cullen argued back and forth, mostly forth with Dorian spewing all kinds of half-hearted unmeant curses that Cullen simply bore. The rest of the Inquisition either defended him, (like The Iron Bull) or joined the assault on Dorian’s side (like Sera).

“Hey Seeker,” Varric nudged Cassandra, doing a commendable job of holding back her ugly tears for more private moments.  
  
“What Varric.” She grit her teeth, bracing for a teasing joke at her expense.

“Now this I’ll write about.”

**

After the fight, Evelyn excused herself from the Sponsor’s box, unheeding of her father’s shouts for her to remain. With her hands fisted in her skirts to keep them clean of mud, she ran as fast as her shoes allowed to the competitors tents, throwing back fabric, looking, searching.

“My lady honors me, come to give me her favor.”

She did not find her quarry, and instead huntress turned caught and cornered.

Andreas.

Evelyn found her voice, somewhere in the dark, lost with her dignity. She squeaked when she spoke.

“I… I had Inquisition business to discuss.” She was a better liar than the weak voice that answered him. But she was still trying to get a hold of the rampant feelings, the degradation and the fear his presence invoked. She gave the world to this man once, laid all she was at his feet, bared herself for his taking. And he took, and took and took and  _took_  , promising her everything and leaving her with nothing.

Andreas’s deep brown gaze penetrated her lie but he smiled, warm and sickening. “Of course, I would never dare to interfere in my lady’s business.”

He purred his ‘my ladys’, an attempt to flatter with his honeyed voice. Cullen always and ever spoke the words with conviction, with truth.

She was  _his lady_.

Andreas, to her ears, it sounded like a mock. ‘You, a creature like  _you_  my lady? Ever perish the thought.’

“I hope to meet your companions formally. I look forward to getting to know them and working with them.”

“They would be pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” 

Diplomatic.

Also false.

“You don’t have to lie, Evelyn. I know they hate me.”

“They don’t know you to hate you.” She answered quickly, disgusted by her reactionary responses. Her mind knew what to do, to protect itself, same as her body, recoling to cool bitter anger before it boiled over and scalded.

 _I know you to hate you_. She thought, heart freezing at unpleasant memory.

“You are sweet to say such.”

A horn blew, signifying the start of the quarterfinals.

“May I beg my lady’s favor? And a kiss to see me through the fighting?”

Grey and pale yellow, the colors of her house. She carried a sash as was custom, and dutifully she pulled it from her pocket and tied it around his wrist. On tiptoes she craned to kiss his cheek, but Andreas was bold, he turned his head, seized her face with his hands and kissed her on the mouth, hungry and demanding.

She yelped which he mistook for a moan, urging him to probe harder and deeper than she would have ever permitted a first kiss be.

“I missed you.” He murmured against her kissing her harder. “It was a mistake to let you, my pretty little chocolate candy, get away.”

Her eyes watered and her hands turned to claws on his arms. All signs he misread, possibly intentionally.

The horn blew a second time and he released her, lowering his gauntleted hand to ghost down from her neck, over her shoulder, and down to the dip in her waist. He smiled, pleased with such a heady kiss and such open affection.

‘ _The engagement is not yet chiseled in stone. The Teryn and his family may revoke their offer should they find you distasteful **again**. Do. Not. Let this come to ruin a second time._ ’ Her father’s warning rung in her ears, her stomach and her soul cried at his touch, his violation, but her face remained stone.

Good.

She was getting better at it.

Would she turn herself to stone at her wedding? Let the rock encase her like it did the wolf statue? Would she remain unfeeling as he kissed her? Would she dance with him, uncaring of hands that roamed in places she swore he would never again touch?

Would she lay soundless under him as he took from her what she did not wish to give to him?

Or….

Would she close her eyes, slip away, and imagine better, sweeter hands to replace his? Better lips. Better smiles. Warmer laughs and more caring eyes.

Would she lay numb?

Or would she imagine better feeling?

“My lady gives such a gift I cannot describe.”

Andreas bowed, ever the Marcher Lord, and took his leave, heading toward the field, his lady’s token fluttering on his wrist.


	30. Desire What Duty Denies

Her father did not question her when she returned, still fuming over her departure and the general debacle, perceived anyway, of the entire tournament. He stewed in his seat, eyeing his daughter darkly. 

“Wipe that scowl off your face boy.” Grandmere used her cane like a fifth appendage, resting it gently on his knee, smiling warmly at the only child she would suffer a man’s embrace for. And though Gareth was not conceived in love, he was birthed in it, one look at the child with her self-same eyes and Eartha succumbed. She loved her son, faults and all. 

And Gareth loved his mother. “Yes mama” He fixed his face, settling into annoyed silence.

Alexia asked voiceless questions which Evelyn denied with a shake of her head, resuming her seat. His taste hadn’t left her mouth, like stubborn food stuck between teeth, something that festered and rotted the longer it was allowed to remain.

She leaned toward her brother. He sat slumped in his seat, sinking all the way down, the back of his head resting against the low back of the chair.

“Vaughn, are you sharing your wine today?”

Vaughn’s watery eyes widened. He was absolutely sure his sister hadn’t said more than three words to him during her entire visit. Reason poked through his fog. “Sister, are you sure? It’s strong.”

Evelyn knew, she counted on it. She nodded.

He offered the bottle and she the glass. He poured a little bit, still unsure of the wisdom of this action. She pressed the glass against the bottle, an exhortation for more. He obliged, almost filling it and she swallowed it down with two unpretty gulps.

Alexia wrinkled her nose, distressed and possibly disgusted. Gareth didn’t care and Susanna never cared.

The deathroot numbed her tongue instantly, staggering her, were she standing, she would probably wobble to her knees or fall all the way down. But as her body weakened, it numbed. She felt nothing. The crawling sensation of Andreas’s nasty touch abated, disappeared.

She smiled at her brother. A louder thanks than words, and he smiled back.

And Oldest Brother and Youngest Sister shared a moment neither had ever had in all their lives.

Shame it came at this expense.

**

Her companions fought.

Her commander fought.

Andreas fought, crowing about the grey and gold favor he wore on his wrist.

Cullen smirked to see the Champion of Ostwick fight, wielding a scrap of cloth he knew meant nothing to the woman who bestowed it. Her real token lay in its home, around his neck, lion’s teeth clacking against the inside of his breastplate.

The round of sixteen shrunk to the round of eight, to the round of four, Cullen winning his matches and the crowd’s favor with every advance. Women and men threw their tokens at his feet, he suffered under a rainbow cloud of silk sashes, even smallclothes.

He broke at least a dozen hearts when he left them all lying in the muddy field.

But he was not without favor, he reached inside his breastplate to pull free the only token he would ever wear.

He made a show of it, for the crowd and for the Sponsor’s Booth, to kiss the yellow fangs before tucking them reverently back into his breastplate. An innocuous gesture, missed by most, even Gareth.

But not Evelyn though.

Nor Andreas.

**

“Well look at you Commander, made it to the final round.”

Varric scoffed at Dorian’s seeming surprise, “Of course he did. He had help.”

Dorian and Cassandra dropped out of the brackets in favor of Cullen, preventing them from fighting him and ensuring his path to Andreas remained unobstructed.

“Or,” Cassandra unsheathed her blade and bared it at Cullen. “He could be just a good fighter.”

“Sure Seeker, take away my fun.”

“Cullen, I’ve watched this Champion fight. If you are to win you need to—“

“It’s not really about winning Cassandra.” Cullen cut her off, digging his heel into the dirt, squishing down the mud, satisfied with the wet, squelching give of it. “I’ve already proven my point. I’m staying, no matter what that means for me. I don’t need to win to show her that.”

Cassandra considered this for a moment.

“Ok, so if you are to win…”

**

She kissed Andreas again because Gareth was watching, seeing him off to the final match to the delighted awe of the crowd. Andreas kept his kiss chaste this time, cold even, Evelyn was glad of it before he hooked an arm around her waist to pull her sharply to his chest before she could pull away.

“I suspect my lady has been spreading her favor around too liberally.”

“You imagine.”

"Do I?”

He moved his hands across her as though he owned her already, as though his previous touches years ago somehow granted him leave to touch her now.

And no one objected.

No one objected when Andreas snaked a steel clad hand to her neck, reaching just under the collar of her dress, a move that would have been met with guards where this man not of a house Gareth had been chasing after for the last decade.

The Champion of Ostwick made the motion of pulling out a necklace, he held the imaginary jewelry in his hands before he brought his lips to it in a kiss.

So he knew.

“Andreas….”

“Evelyn, I understand your reluctance. You love him, I understand that, but I have hope that you will love me as you once did.”

The parts of her not yet numbed by her brother’s wine lashed out.

“Love you? You don’t remember do you? What you said to me? The last thing you said to me.” She hissed.

“I said a lot of things to you, dear heart, things I remember you enjoyed. I could say them again.”

“Oh yes, I’d love to have you tell me again ‘mudskins aren’t for marrying’.”

Andreas stood silently, brow knit in confusion before his laugh stung her like a reprimand “Ha! Don’t be silly Evelyn. I would _never_ say such a thing! You know that. You know I would never mean to hurt you that way. I loved you, I love you still.”

No. Untrue! She was there, she heard him, the word from his mouth broke her in _half_ because she believed after _years_ of rejection that _he_ was different only to prove himself no better than the rest of the boys who courted her hand but were after her body.

Right?

“That was so long ago CC. You sure it was me and not someone else?”

CC, chocolate candy. He did call her that, it felt like BB--what Alphy used to call her but someone different. To be called anything affectionate by anyone was enough for her but...

Doubt. The hate in her heart turned to doubt.

Had she, all this time, had she been wrong? Looking at him, the sincerity in brown eyes, the soft caress of his hand on her cheek, she remembered the words he said long ago and the sweetness with which he said them. Was her hurt a hurt, or was it a grudge that, like a child, she never let go of?

He kissed her cheek, Evelyn didn’t flinch.

Andreas departed to take the field, and Evelyn fell into her chair.

Her brother offered her more wine. She gulped it down gladly, the sickness melting away into nothing.

**

“My friends.” Varric was on the Sponsor’s platform now, all eyes and ears tuned to him as he announced the final fight. “We’ve been through a day have we not?!” He opened his arms to the crowd’s adulation. He let them roar for a solid minute before he gestured for silence. “Well, that day is almost over and we are all sad to see it end.”

The wedding celebrations would begin at Tourney’s end, this Varric knew.

“But before that happens, I’ve got one more fight for ya! One more battle for the ages!”

As the crowd cheered, the two combatants faced each other down.

“So you’re the famous Commander I’ve heard about?” This man was no threat to him, he knew the deal Lord Trevelyan made with his daughter and what she would lose if she broke it.

So the Cub of Skyhold as Lord Trevelyan preferred to call him, was of no concern. A bit of sport. A dull bit of sport considering the man didn’t have the courtesy to address his betters.

Cullen dug his heel into the dirt, assuring his footing in the mud. Cassandra’s lessons helped, but he didn’t need to win.

Andreas’s taunting was nothing, unheard.

He didn't need to win, that wasn't why he came back. He came back for a promise made and an oath sworn.

_Just look at me, B, I need you to see me. Please._

“Ok I want a good _clean_ fight! But not too clean alright! Begin!” _  
_

The crowd howled louder when the fight began, Andreas tearing forward with an indignant snarl. The Champion of Ostwick battered against Cullen’s shield, his blows withering, threatening to sever not shield from arm but arm from body.

Cullen remained firm, rooted, baring his blade but raising his shield high, taking cautious steps back and back.

“What the shite is he doing?” Sera screamed, back on her Iron Bull shaped perch.

“Relax, Other Boss has got a plan.”

“Yeah, a plan to look like a damn pansy.”

“I told him to…” Cassandra cupped her mouth and shouted. “Parry you fool! Attack!”

Cullen’s shield bore another blow and Cassandra threw up her arms, exasperated.

“So your Commander proves himself no lion, my daughter.”

Gareth, ever the insufferable gloater, leaned into his daughter pointing out what looked to be an inglorious moment for the Commander as the Champion of Ostwick landed another knee splintering blow.

“Lord Trevelyan, this fight recalls the one at Skyhold. Did you ever see someone about your poor broken tooth?” Alexia remained ambivalent towards her sister-in-law’s Commander, but the man was sweet to Masan and he humiliated Gareth which more than earned him a warm place in her heart. She slipped a smile to Evelyn, as Gareth closed his mouth, worrying that chipped tooth with his tongue, worrying more about how it looked.

Susanna actually chuckled, setting down her wine for the first time all day. Her husband’s vanity was a family legend.

Andreas focused on his sword, concentrating on beating, slashing, cutting down the whelp, the cub. But neither pride nor arrogance struck him down, he didn’t underestimate his opponent or dismiss him as unworthy of concern. Andreas was the Champion of Ostwick, fools do not earn such titles.

But as such simple things like words, can undo a heart.

Simple things like mud can undo a man.

Andreas did not pay attention.

He slipped, boots sliding him forward in the muck.

Cullen, seeing advantage born, pressed forward, surefooted, spinning around him, delivering a solid shield slam to the man’s back.

Andreas tipped.

And fell forward.

Face first.

The crowd stood stark silent, their Champion defeated so easily, while Gareth cursed and groaned, Evelyn bit her knuckles a hard snort escaping her.

“Care to share?” Alexia leaned close.

She laughed, and laughed, voice ringing out over the hushed, shocked silence of the crowd, straight to Cullen's ears, piercing him like her arrows.

For her sound was in his ears.

It was the way she laughed. The way she cursed. It was the way she howled, the way she said his name. It was the sound of her boots on stone, walking like she owned everything and smiling like she owned nothing but joy. It was her drawl, her twang, her cultured tones. It was her _voice_. He couldn’t hear the screaming when she spoke—singing to his soul with no melody. He felt like quiet in her wake and it was _amazing_ to him.

She turned to Alexia, grinning so hard the stone on her face cracked. “I told Cullen about Andreas once, about what he did and what he said to me. And Cullen, casual as you please goes on and says this.” Evelyn threw her voice to make it sound deeper, a cheap imitation of her lion’s growl, but no less comforting. “If I ever meet this Andreas.”

She dared to look at him now, standing over his opponent who still struggled, rising from the muck to spit out a mouthful of it.

“I'll make him eat mud. By the fistful.”

Cullen winked, first promise paid.

**

The crowd cheered, chanting his name, their new Grand Victor. Already, exaggerated tales of his valor were spreading beyond Ostwick's double walls, ensuring that by nightfall Cullen Rutherford; Grand Victor would be known as far away as Markham. Within a day, Denerim.

Cold comfort, even in the face of his cheering companions.

Josephine counted the winners purse, sighing. “This is nothing, enough gold for maybe a stack of blankets or a few sacks of grain. But, you buy us honor. It means much to have a Grand Victor within our ranks.”

Rainier coughed.

“Apologies. _Two_ Grand Victors.”

His strange coughing fit subsided.

“Not enough though?”

The Ambassador shook her head. “No, not enough.”

**

The Tourney ended at sunset and she would be married by midnight.

Marchers enjoyed being contrarian. Thedas conducted one way, the Free Marches, then, preferred to march in a different direction. They crowned princes for mere cities and called everyone messere and serah when a simple Ser or Madam sufficed everywhere else. Even their weddings bucked tradition with the reception taking place before the ceremony, believing that the service and not the party was the true climax of any joining.

He suffered to be stuffed into white plated armor, Victor's garb, not as prestigious as Champion armor but just as flashy. He drew the line at his surcoat, though, preferring its red comfort to the white furry paldroons his tailors meant to pin him in.

“Nice look Other Boss.”

Cullen shrugged off the compliment with a bitter snort. “I think you should stop calling me that.”

“You forgot what I told you when we were in Dumat. It’s not a tease. You’re not ‘Other Boss’ just ‘cause she’s the Boss. You earned that title on your own. Just like you earned Victor.”

He knew winning wouldn’t change anything. Not a thing. She was still destined to marry another man and he was doomed to watch it. He only fought to stay by her side, whatever pain this separation wrought, they would at least be together.

Where she went, he would follow.

“You could have ran, Commander. Shit, no one would blame you much. But you came back, you fought, you’re still fighting.”

Cassandra handed him a fistful of whiskey, understanding it was sometimes better to commune with spirits instead of the Maker.

“It’s almost time, for the procession I mean. For what it is worth, Cullen, you are being very brave. Not many people can deny love for duty.”

“Listen to the both of you!” Dorian emerged from behind a folded screen, the only one not dressed in snows and creams.

Black, all black, even his fingernails.

“Dorian!” Cassandra gasped. “What are you wearing?”

“I was led to believe one wore black on the occasion of someone's death.”

“No one is dying kadan.”

“Maybe not on the outside, but you lot are ready to bury hearts and leave them rotting. I am not!”

He fumed, slamming the door behind him, heading down the hall to the bride’s suite.

**

“So,” Sera sat on the bench in a way unintended by its crafter, her head hanging over the seat, legs kicked over the back, swinging idly. “We’re just supposed to standby and watch the Quizzie get married to someone she don’t love and pretend it’s alright?”

“That’s right.” Rainier answered her, running fingers over his blue and gold favor. The Commander didn't like him, and he earned that ire. But the two men, like it or not, were similar in ways they'd probably rather not be.

“That’s bollocks.”

“It is.”

“And then, to add fish to the frangipane, we’re supposed to be all nice to him when he comes back with us? Like we ain’t gonna stuff his sheets with horseshite?

“Right. Though consider, his sheets will be the Inquisitor’s as well.”

Sera shuddered, making a retching noise of distaste.

“All this…so we get to keep on goin’? All this…for us?”

“Would you expect anything less from her? A woman who remains in the Fade then tears her way out of it? Who wakes up from death? She’d rather eat her own heart, fed to her on a platter from enemies worse than Corypheus, than fail any one of us.”

“That’s right Hero.” Varric took the seat in the empty space next to Sera, fumbling with his Merchant’s Guild coat, still grey in the places he hadn’t dusted off yet. “And we, witnesses to tragedy as we are, need to be in our places for the procession.”

**

Dorian barged into her dressing room, startling the servants screaming, barely registering to Evelyn as a disturbance. The Tevinter waved away her dressers with a sharp word and a flick of his wrist. For a grim minute he remembered elven slaves, the way they wordlessly complied, conditioned like dogs to respond to only gestures. One battle at a time Dorian, both were important, yet this came first.

They scurried so fast out the door, Dorian examined his fingers, black nailed and severe, to ensure no actual magic issued forth, blood or otherwise.

Convinced his ire hadn’t completely undone his control, he rooted two hands on the edges of Evelyn’s vanity chair and turned, violently scraping the furniture against the floor, bringing sorora and fratoro face to face for the first time since the night of the opening ball.

Her dressers painted her face, hung jewels in her hair reminiscent of the gold and pearls she wore in her locs that night at Halamshiral. Instead of green silk, she wore white. Neck and shoulders bare, unbroken skin like soft earth unspoiled by human hands.

Her train was longer than she was tall, and her veil lay waiting on the vanity, attached to her diadem, waiting for her grandmother's hands to pin it to her hair for the ceremony.

She was beautiful in her tragedy.

“My dear, we need to talk. You and that thick headed Commander of yours may be content to just roll over and take it but I won’t stand for it. I will not! And I know a thing or two about _marriages of convenience_.”

“This isn’t a convenience, Dorian. But a necessity.”

“A necessity?” He asked quietly, turning the word over, sounding as though he were unsure of its meaning. “For a necessity you would break his heart and kill your own, shackling yourself to that asshole?”

“You make it sound like I have a choice.”

“You do! You always do! Evelyn, Amata superia, what did I tell you? After we met my father, what did I say?”

She didn’t answer him. She avoided his hot stare but Dorian pushed beyond his comfort and barreled into hers. He lifted her chin from its new home in her chest and forced her to meet him in the eye. “You must fight for what is in your heart.”

Dorian's furious gaze struck past the stone, reaching deeper into her chest, poking at the pieces of her heart that still bled, that still had feeling. He lanced her like a boil and two days' worth of suppressed and festering rage came pouring forth.

“You hypocrite!” In fratoro's comfort and in his confidence she forgot her courtesies and let her fury _fly_.

A dark fist rammed through the vanity mirror shattering it, shards of silver glass sticking in between her knuckles.

“Lie to me Dorian! Lie!”

He did not cower, he stood taller, ready to roar back if she needed him to.

“Tell me!” She continued. “Tell me you wouldn’t, if Halward Pavus died tonight, tell me you wouldn’t be on the first boat back to Quarinus by break of day, leaving the Iron Bull, leaving me, to assume your duty! Tell me you’d stay, knowing full well what your absence will do to your family. How they’ll be eaten alive. Tell me!”

In the face of her casual violence, Dorian didn't flinch. Instead he magicked away the broken glass from her hand, eyes turning red to heal the jagged flesh, sucking the blood back into the wound before it had the chance to stain the dress. The wound was gone, but the pain lingered, Evelyn felt again, and was glad for it.

“Tell me, and I’ll leave. I’ll take Cullen and we’ll _fly_ outta here. But the same duty that prevents you from staying, prevents me from leaving. It’s not just about the Inquisition anymore. It’s about my family, it’s about my duty to them as well as to others who need me. If there’s a way, tell me, because I sure as shit can’t think my way out of this one. I can’t do both. I can’t fight for my heart and do my duty, there is just no room for both!”

Dorian burned with shame turning his face from her righteous wrath because fuck all and sundry, she was right. Without a magister, his family would be destroyed, utterly, and no matter what they've done to him, no matter the contempt he had for them, he couldn't let that happen.

“And here I was thinking that _I'd_ get to be the hero, swoop in, look devilishly handsome and talk some sense into the heroine. But, fuck me darling, you're right. I cannot lie to you, no more than I could say I wouldn't leave The Iron Bull if duty called. I don't--” He pulled her into his chest, rocked just as hard by his own revelations as by her truth.

He would leave too. Abandon beating heart for greater purpose.

“If you could walk away, leave all this behind, would you?”

He thought, conjuring an image of a shared villa in the countryside, prize gamecocks strutting freely while children and adults, once denied the right, learned to read at his hand, while yet others learned how to defend that right at the Iron Bull's hand.

Another image; Dorian covered in blood and soot, The Iron Bull at his back, the dying screams of a slaver ringing in his ears.

Another image; Dorian welcoming a baby into the world, eyes brimming with blood and tears as mother and child are delivered safely. The Iron Bull whispers 'imekari' in his ears and Dorian nearly dies of joy.

“Yes.” Dorian choked. “Maker take me, yes.”

“So what do we do?”

“What we were born to, sorora.” He took a handkerchief, black like the rest of him and dabbed the corners of her eyes to spare the kohl that flared around them.

“You could...” The stone settled again, like upset sediment coming to rest in a riverbed. “You could make me forget. Wiggle your fingers, make your eyes red, and make me forget I ever loved him.”

He was willing to do anything for her, heed any request, a wedding present from a brother, except this one. “You know I won’t. But at least we're all here for you. Ready to make his life a living torment.”

A voice from outside the closed door, tender and timid, called to the pair of them.

“Mistress. The reception is starting, you must take your place for the procession.”

“Well.” Dorian reached for the bouquet, white calla lilies, and tucked them into her hands. “No one can say I didn’t try. For what it’s worth, you are beautiful, Evelyn. It breaks my heart to see it wasted on him.”

“Mine too Dor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _So just hold on we’re going home_   
>  _Just hold on we’re going home_   
>  _It’s hard to do these things alone_   
>  _Just hold on we’re going home_


	31. Suteki Da Ne

Her father came for her, smiling like death as he tucked her hand into his elbow, escorting his youngest to the grand hall.

Silk bunting dyed silver, pale yellow, white and red hung from the ceiling, dipped and looped in arrangements that looked to her eyes like nooses. Banners painted with the rearing horse of House Trevelyan superimposed over Ostison's double walls hung over the tables. There was a stage for the band, a 15 piece orchestra, headed by a woman who sang at weddings longer than Eartha Trevelyan lived.

Grandmere took her place of honor at the procession’s head, lesser family occupying lesser stations down the hall and into the Grand Ballroom, adjacent to the foyer. Evelyn dipped a low curtsy that Grandmere returned even on her creaky knees, using her cane for balance.

She placed a hand on Evelyn’s cheek covering the three scars her father left her, thumbing them softly.

“Ala ou bèl.” Grandmere whispered. “Mwen kòkòt.”

Gareth rolled his eyes, hating the patois passed between grandmother and granddaughter. He tugged softly at his daughter’s arm, time to finish this.

“The first payment of your per annum you will leave with, provided of course there are no interruptions of the ceremony.” Gareth whispered, keeping his lips pulled in a smile so it looked like father was imparting to daughter sage marriage advice. “The second will come along after six months, then six months after that, so forth and so on.”

“Yes Papa.”

Gareth squeezed her arm, softly, intending it to actually be a gesture of affection, yet still felt like a censure. She still flinched, a frission of discomfort rising gooseflesh in her skin.

“The chateau I will give you now, but any other lands or houses will be transferred to you, held in trust until the birth of your first child. Gender is of course insignificant but I don’t need to tell you how easier this will all be if you have a boy.”

“Yes Papa.”

“The deeds and guarantees are watertight, don’t try to employ crafty barristers to argue your way out of any of this.”

“Yes Papa.”

“Now smile. Your family is watching.”

The procession wasn't really a march, just family lined up on either side of the hall leading into the grand ballroom, observing as the father of the bride escorted the bride into the groom's waiting arms. Andreas down at the end of the hall, standing before the double doors, smiling, looking as though he were indeed the luckiest man in the Maker’s Creation.

Evelyn's side was filled, the line snaking down the hall with family distant and close. Cousins of all degrees clapped and cheered for her, whistling and hooting, calling her name.

“The Inquisitor!” They gasped, holding their babies and making them wave to her as she passed. The more pious members bowed, the extremely ‘sanctified’ knelt—honored, humbled, and awed that the Bride’s Chosen was a blood relative.

Mages, Templars, merchants, scholars, generations of them here for her, unaware that their future successes would be paid for this night with her heart. Contracts, scholarships, appointments, marriage arrangements all held behind double walls insurmountable knocked down by her hand.

For who would deny the relation of a Teryna _and_ the Herald of Andraste?

Because being just one, wasn’t enough.

Yet, the opposite side of the hall the family of the groom was noticeably absent.

“Andreas's family?”

Gareth soured. “Had other places to be.”

“The teryn's son is getting married and they have 'other places to be'? Do you not know a snub when you see one father?”

“You, dear nug, handle your horse and I'll handle mine”

Gareth always dressed for war, even at the wedding of his youngest. Clad in black metal armor, breastplate crossed with a silver and yellow sash, Lord Trevelyan handed his daughter to her new husband, the groom meeting them at the door to the ball room, transition occurring right at the end of the procession of people, right where the family dearest to her, her Inquisition, stood. All their faces shrouded in black to match Dorian’s garb. Cullen standing closest to Andreas, gleaming in his white armor like the Maker’s Holiest lost on his way home.

She curtsied, remembering her courtesies again, as she took Andreas’s proffered hand, offering as little of the appendage as she could get away with. She kept her head down, eyes on the floor, almost squeezing them shut to avoid looking at their her husband or the one who was _supposed to be_. 

The stone was spreading, from the soles of her feet up, and from the crown of her head down, creeping slowly, the final layer of it, to choke off all feeling.

Unable to forget his love, she would sever connection to it, easier to remember if it no longer held association with warmth, or softness, or sweetness, or joy, her love a rose weeded from a garden of ashes, pulled and killed at its root—her heart. That would be the last to go, and it would be a while before it petrified.

But it was a treacherous thing. She jerked her head a bit, rising her eyes to meet Cullen’s gaze, out of habit, or perhaps compulsion, or perhaps a last minute spasm of the dying.

Gold. Molten and unwavering. His eyes dug through the dirt she kept trying to bury her heart in, took root, and waited.

**

Contrarian as Free Marchers are, a reception in Ostwick was the same as reception in Ferelden. Food, drinking, dancing, games, and celebration. Nobles from every house of note (except for some odd reason the teryn’s) partied, still riding high from the conclusion of the Tourney.

They crowded  them, asking all kinds of questions, everyone suddenly interested the foreigners from the Inquisition and their Grand Victor.

Dorian and the Iron Bull preened under the flood of attention, flexing and flirting in turn.

Cassandra had so many requests to dance, Varric had to simultaneously create and curate a dance card for her.

“Varric, why not that one?”

“Seeker, I caught him picking his nose and wiping it under the table, no, you aren’t dancing with that one.”

The Grand Victor faced away from the party, sick with himself, unable to watch as she sat, quietly, eyes and hands in her lap while her noble husband chatted with some other noble person, at their noble table on the noble dais.

_She was meant for men far better than you._

Indeed, a man far better would have never agreed to this, would have been strong enough to never let this come to pass.

“Grand Victor.”

A voice, old and watery, aged, disrupted his solitude.

He smiled curtly and readied an excuse on his tongue, his responses at Halamshiral modified to fit the new occasion. A woman, pale brown like parchment, head and hair covered in a grey and yellow scarf wrapped around and around, pinned with a rearing horse broach. A Trevelyan.

“Madam,” He replied, with a slight tip of his head. He remembered her from their arrival and the Welcome Ball, before memory snapped into place. This was their matriarch. “Dame Trevelyan. We have not spoken since our time outside the manor.”

“Indeed. Commander.” She switched her cane, carved from a single exquisite piece of ebony, and stuck her newly freed hand out to him, daring him not to take it. “I have found men distasteful for most of my life, young man, but for such a handsome creature as you, I am willing to make noted exception.”

Cullen rolled his eyes, making no attempt to hide his exasperation and Dame Trevelyan laughed once, a short barking chuckle. “Forgive me, I am old and forgetful of my courtesies. Will you escort an old woman, ser?”

Reluctantly, he agreed, taking her hand and propping it in the crook of his arm. “Of course, madam. Did you wish to dance?”

“Maker no! You ain’t that special.”

Cullen smiled, consciously battling against the expression until the expression won out. He heard the change, the dame switched into the damsel the same way the princess could switch into the huntress, how could he not smile?

“Do I amuse you ser?”

“I am remembering someone who has your same gift of speech.”

Eartha Trevelyan returned a knowing smile. “No, we won’t dance, legs too stiff for such things. Take me to the Grand Foyer, Ser.”

“As you wish.”

Eartha let him lead her, leaning on his sturdy arm as they left the ballroom for the empty grand foyer. “The stairs please.” She pointed her cane and he followed, unminding it took her several unsteady starts and stops to get up to the first landing where Bann Trevelyan could look down on him in a mock of parental affection.

“Is there a reason why we’re here?”

“Oh, anxious are you to get back to the nuptuials?”

“Never-mind.” The longer he could be distracted and possibly saved from the pitying look of his comrades, the adoring look of his new fans, and the dying look of his beloved the better.

Eartha ran her hand on the corner of the portrait where Evelyn stood, Bucey hanging from her hand.

“There is no way I can explain this to you in a way that you can understand.” She started, skipping pleasantries and striking blade to business. “You will never know what it is like Victor, what it was like for me, what it is like for Evelyn. You will never understand it, even if you see it and recognize it. You will _not_ understand. And so you will not understand why Evelyn must lay down her heart tonight.”

“We need…”

“This isn’t about the Inquisition’s needs. They were convenient to my purpose but nothing more.”

She waited for him to catch up, to let the gravity of her words weigh him down.

“You, this was your idea?! She loves you. Trusted you! And you’re forcing her to marry that bastard, one who cares _nothing_ for her! She talked about you so much, about how you were the only thing in this house worth coming back to and you’ve done nothing but abuse and misuse her for your own gain. Neither her heart nor her happiness mean anything to you, does it?”

He let her arm go, the cruelest thing he could muster himself to do to an old woman. She didn’t teeter or wobble, the panther, like all cats, ready for the slightest change. Her ebony cane thunked against the floor.

“You mean to lecture me? When you understand nothing! Nor could you ever, _corpseface_!”

Grandmere thumped her cane on the floor, anger coloring her parchment skin, turning it darker, as though touched to the heat of a flame.

The Commander whipped his head back, the matron’s words stinging like a slap. It wasn’t the word itself—which was largely comical if taken from its context—but it was the venom and the conviction behind them. The hate and spite in her eyes, the snarl at her rouged lip and the spittle that flew with it.

She said it the way he used to say ‘mage’, never understanding what it would feel like on the other side. It hurt, a wasp’s sting, not painful, but something that would remain longer than the echo of the word, something that would poison slowly—and only worsen as time wore on.

Eartha Trevelyan pulled the chain on her anger, her long simmering resentment and wariness for those of Cullen’s kind, reeling it back into her heart.

She didn’t wish to insult him.

But she wasn’t going to apologize either.

“You will not understand. You weren’t born an elf, or a qunari, or a dwarf, or a mudskin.”

Cullen flinched.

“Get used to it!”  She barked. “Between one on the Sunburst Throne and one wearing the Inquisitor’s crown you’re going to hear it a lot. I suspect you’ve heard quite a bit of it already”

“My fill of it, madam.”

“We wear it close, closer than skin or armor to turn blades set against us but it still hurts. Every time.”

“I’ve seen.”

And now, just a part of him, felt it too.

“You would think that our wealth, our history, would mitigate old and stupid prejudices but they do not, ser. They never have. Evelyn knows this. Our Divine knows this as well, and she has the second mark against her for having the temerity of being born a mage.

“Evelyn can... she can finally take us farther and higher than we have ever been. A ternya. No Trevelyan has ever flown so high, could ever even dream it.”

“Why you’re are telling me this?”

“So you understand, ser, that she does not lay aside her love for you for her father’s tokens.”

“You knew.”  

“Of course I knew. Plain on both your faces the minute you helped her from her horse. I need you to understand, Commander, she does it for her family. And for you to further understand that you’re little stunt will accomplish nothing. You won’t get to win fair lady’s hand. You won’t prove anything. All you proven is that you have the better boot.”

The superfluous medals on his chest tinkled when he shook his head, a light chuckle with no humor escaping from him with a heavy exhale.

“Madam, it was never supposed to. I _know_ I can’t change her mind. I’m her Commander, I learned that lesson long ago.”

The matriarch’s scowl deepened. “Then why? Why come back. I heard from my servants you were dismissed. If you know coming back would change nothing...why?”

The stare in his eyes made the answer obvious, the same look Assan had as she lay dying, far from home or beloved relation, suffering burning agony yet still content. “Because I love her. And I would do anything for her, including fight a pointless battle just to show that I mean to stay with her no matter what. Where she goes, I follow.”

Dame Trevelyan thumped her cane on the ground one, two, three, times to knock loose the lump in her throat.

She held her hand out again, imperious, daring him to make the same move twice. He accepted it, offering his elbow again and the panther lay down to rest, mollified for the moment.

“Do not misunderstand me ser. Evelyn is the best of my issue. I would die gladly for my family, any one of them. And it kills my old heart to see her bury hers. If only you had been born higher.”

They returned to the Ball Room in time. Just in time to see Evelyn take Andreas’s hand as he asked his wife for a first dance.

“Would my lady do me the honor?” He kissed her knuckles delighted by the obvious shiver of desire that coursed through her bringing her near tears.

“Of course.”

Andreas led his wife to the dance floor. She took his hand and followed behind him stiffly, a corpse walking in her necromancer's hand. Her face held no expression except placid disinterest but she still made all the movements and sounds of a living being. The creeping stone was in her stomach now, reaching with gravelly tendrils up and and up to twist around her heart and make the transformation complete.

She curtsied at her partner as the music queued and dutifully put her arm around his shoulder when it was time to move. He led her, she followed, they danced.

The music was some stuffy Orleasian waltz played 1000 times at 1000 weddings. Even the musicians looked bored playing it, fingers moving through rote memorization than with any actual feeling.

“Ser Rutherford. I would ask a favor.” Eartha turned to him reaching wrinkled hand to center his face on hers.

“Yes?”

“I would have that dance.”

“Madam?”

“Not for me, but for her.” Eartha released him, ebony cane tapping against the marble tile in time with the waltz, remembering a dance long finished with a woman who wore the forest in her hair.

**

“Where have you been?! You missed it when Sera switched Andreas’s wine glass with a tankard full of mud!”

“Dorian, do you know any good songs?”

“I know a few funeral dirges that might come in handy for the occasion, why?”

“I…” Cullen paused mid-thought. “A wedding gift. We haven’t given her a wedding gift.”

“A dead husband perhaps?”

“No. We aren’t that lucky.”

“You are right, we have been terrible wedding guests what with all the ‘letting her get married to a monster’. But…ahh. I may have something for you. Do you think they’ll throw me out if I play something from the Imperium?”

“You play?”

“That lute in my quarters isn’t for show. I’m the son of a magister, we’re all damned royalty so I know a few more things like calligraphy, book binding, and yes, the lute.”

The two men watched the dance continue, wincing at Evelyn’s jerky steps. “Maker’s breath, she looks like she’s dying.”

“Commander, go to her. I have what you need.” 

**

Stone danced but not very well, legs jammed up with rocks in the joints. His fingers danced on her waist, sliding over the bodice as though he were touching skin not silk. The longer she permitted his hands to be on her, the more she felt her heart melt and bleed through the soles of her feet leaving invisible streaks of the blood on the floor. They roamed, his hands, touching her, the press of a fingertip an invasion, a stab wound, she was torn between crying and crying out but stone can’t cry. Stone remembers courtesies, smiles demurely, and hopes that when it is kissed, it does not throw up on the dancefloor.

His smile tightened, flattened, and died. “Is something wrong Evelyn? You don’t seem to be very…cooperative.”

“I’m fine.”

“You haven’t been fine since the melee. Did you think him winning was going to save you?”

Stone knew better than to fall for that trap. “Save me? Do I need a rescue?”

“You might if you knew what wicked things we’ll get up to later.”

An hour ago, stone would have retched. But the stone was in her stomach now, and she had eaten nothing and drank only deathroot wine. Stone did not feel the twist in its gut.

The waltz ended, the guests clapping softly and politely. She stiffly bowed, quirking the corners of her lips in the barest of polite smiles. Andreas, though mightily annoyed at her frostiness, expected this kind of behavior. In time, he would make her remember that she loved him once.

“Excuse me, my lady?”

The words were right. They were right and they hadn't sounded right for hours because they were said with the wrong mouth.

Cullen, here, close enough to touch.

Andreas scowled, still feeling grit in his teeth from the face full of mud earlier.

“The Grand Victor, to what do we owe the honor?”

“I thought I might have a dance if you will permit it.”

“Sure, one more twirl for old time's sake. Be careful though, my lady's legs are a little stiff.” Andreas let her go, leaving bruises on her soul in the wake of his fingers.

Blood rage colored the tips of his ears violent red, “Not you! I wasn’t talking to you! I neither need nor want your permission. My lady, _may I have this dance_?”

His offered hand was unlike any healing magic she had ever felt.

She.

Felt.

She soaked in his touch like parched earth in the rain, mixing and melting until stone turned to mud.

And she felt _beautiful_.

**

Dorian whispered to the singer, lute in hand, borrowed from one of the musicians. The mage made his request and saw the smirk curl in the woman's face.

"'Tis not something requested often this far south but yes, we allow you to play alone. I wonder, will the audience object to a song from the Imperium?"

"I don't care."

**

The first notes trickled down the strings, like drops of water on window glass. She moved like she was meant to, like she used to, like at the Winter Palace, and in the streets of the Maskan. She danced like she never forgot how, like dancing never hurt before.

With him.

Oh Maker. She danced.

And the world righted itself for just a moment.

He danced like he practiced, night after night, over and over while she slept or when she was gone, practicing in the comfort of anonymity, preparing for the day when he would be her groom.

At Halamshiral he looked more at his feet than in her eyes careful not to step where he shouldn't. He still stepped where he shouldn't, but she adjusted, she _moved_ , knowing better than he knew where he meant to go.

Seamless.

They danced.

Since his dismissal this morning, and his return to the Tourney, they had not spoken, they needed to, but not now, not while they danced.

Josephine wept openly, comforted by Rainer's hand stroking the back of her neck as she sobbed “my fault” again and again. Cole helped, leaving tissues and handkerchiefs in the pockets of every lord and lady moved to tears by the display. Only lovers danced like that, only lovers smiled like that. Husband and wife danced before, but lovers true and Maker blessed danced now.

The glass obstructed her view, the Lady Susanna put it down. Watched her daughter dance, and felt a stone crack somewhere she couldn't name.

“She's ruining it! Mother, let me end this. They are singing in Tevene at a Marcher wedding, everyone is crying, and those two!” Gareth motioned to the dancefloor. “Are going to ruin everything.”

“They ruin nothing, silly boy.” His mother rapped him lightly on the forehead with her cane. “They ruin nothing. You will allow them this last moment.”

“Yes mama.” Gareth smiled, one of his rare and true ones.

He played as much for himself as he played for them. Dorian would not be surprised, not in the slightest, if the Iron Bull could parse out the words of this, a Tevene love song, and understand its meaning.  
  
_Wouldn't it be nice_  
If we could walk together  
Hand in hand, side by side 

Courtesies and duties forgotten, lost on the curve of her newfound smile, his grip tightened, pulling her closer and closer to him until they were chest to chest. Her scent was in his nose and his heart was in her chest. Their lilting dance slowed into just a rock back and forth, eyes closed, bodies close.

Until the last cord was struck.

Until the song ended.

Dorian held the last few notes of the song, let them linger in the air like smoke from a puffed out candle, stretching the sound for as long as he could.

Cullen breathed in the heartbeat after the last note silenced, speaking the first words to her since this morning separated them. 

The last of his promises finally paid.

“I am here, you are safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t often write ‘songfic’ but if you wanna hear what Dorian’s playing or how I imagine it sounded in that ballroom, listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl6KGGuyGR0
> 
> “Ala ou bèl: How beautiful you are  
> Mwen kotkot: My sweetheart.


	32. Fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've waited since August to post this.

Evelyn breathed again. Deep and full, chest expanding against his now that the stone no longer crushed it. She struggled to find something to say, to answer him and his promise paid.

“You look good in white.” She scrunched her nose, thoroughly embarrassed by her less than meaningful response.

He blushed, couldn’t help it, couldn’t fight it down, the Grand Victor reddening like a little boy hearing his first compliment from the prettiest girl he’d ever known. “You...ahh..you do too.”

With her short little chuckle, she fell further into his arms and he held her close, the both of them pretending this was more than a fleeting moment, but the start of a lifetime.

“Mistress?”

**

They took her from him, two maids ushering her away to make the final preparations for the ceremony.

And demon broke open the tiles on the floor and crawled his way up from the Pit, grinning, voice a snarling growl that would chase the sleep from him for the rest of his days.

“Grand Victor, I’ve come to ask for a boon.”

Andreas.

Cullen grunted, unable to acknowledge the bastard any other way.

Andreas smiled though, undeterred by the dog lord’s atrocious manners. “You see, I find myself without friend here.”

“Keep looking.” Cullen growled.

“Peace, I mean you no harm. I only mean to ask if you’ll be my best man?”

Cullen’s teeth ground together, jaw bulging with the effort to keep his tongue civil.  “Find another fool, preferably one from your family.”

“Trust me, I would but they didn’t come.”

“Why? So contemptible your own family can’t stand to be near you?”

Andreas waved away the insult. “Oh, you know how it is. Surely  _you_  must understand. What with her being... and you being...” Andreas made a nebulous gesture with his hands, Cullen continued to glare, jaw clenched. “No? Look, my father agreed to this because we Ostisons are a pious lot. What better way to earn the Maker’s Favor by marrying his Bride’s Herald. And…”

Andreas waved him closer, whispering. “Our dear Lord Trevelyan is disgustingly, stinkingly rich for a mudskin. Don't you agree? Better to have him as an ally now than an enemy later.”

Cullen's hands clenched at his hips, looking for a sword pommel to grip instead of a windpipe. He made a growl in his throat, a displeased noise that a smarter man, one with self-preservation in mind would have taken as a warning to stop this conversation.

But Andreas kept talking.

“My mother and little brother protested, ‘you keep the horses in the stable where they belong.’ They say. And you and I can both can agree from experience that our Evelyn is a spirited little ride. The hindquarters on that filly.” Andreas shivered with a smile and Cullen could not commit to breathing, chest locked up, whole body  _seized_  in apoplexy.

“Couldn’t find one like her after our first go round—all of them too  _rogueish_  for me. Imagine my delight when she fell into my lap again. So, I need a best man, find myself short one. It’ll be hard of course,” Andreas dropped his voice into the threatening registers. “To stand behind me, the closest you’ll ever be to making her yours.”

Andreas stepped back, all smiles again.

“Would you do that for me, friend? I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”

Hands still flexed, seeking the comfort of a blade. Idle hands were the tools of demons, but Cullen's idle hands might do the Maker’s work and pop the head off this fucker like a champagne cork.

He stepped towards his enemy, miraculously keeping his hands out of Andreas’s blood.

“Ser, If you ev-er refer to her or her family or her people like that again, I will kill you. 

“If you hurt her, I will kill you. 

“If you make her cry, I will kill you. 

“If you touch her and she does not wish it, I will  _kill._   _You_. 

“If you hurt  _her_  children, I will  _kill_.  _You_. 

“This I promise, I swear by the Blade of Mercy, and I am a man who keeps his promises, damn the consequences!”

Andreas chuckled, amused.

“How quaint, Andraste’s Mabari growling at Maferath. Remember how that story ends whelp. Still, you waste my time. My bride cometh, and oh will she.” Andreas turned from the floor to leave but Cullen still called after him.

“Wait, I would accept your offer.”

Andreas wheeled, humor on his face.

“Oh really? Is the Ferelden so dense that he does not recognize a joke at his expense?”

Loyal and without pride, Cullen shook his head. “Do you need a best man or not?”

Andreas shrugged. “Then come with me.”

**

They dressed her in white again, but plainer, ordinary. The reception was for the people but the ceremony itself was for the Maker and neither bride nor groom could approach the altar in vanity.

A white sheath, utterly without adornment, taken in at the chest and hips, made of fine silk, gossamer spun, exquisite against her deep dark brown flesh.

“Once again, you are beautiful, 'tite fille.” Grandmere arranged the Trevelyan diadem in her hair, draping her veil over her face, the last accessory falling into it's proper place.

Evelyn did not answer her, the stone resurgent now, subsuming her bones and muscles, making every breath, once again, a chore.

She glared at herself in the mirror, unable to see what grandmere saw, counting her sins instead of her beauties.

She should have chosen Templars.

She should have executed Rainier.

She should have wasted less time with the people and spent more on earning the trust and loyalty of the banns and teyrns.

She should have conscripted the Wardens.

She should have made the mages submit.

She should have done so much more.

If she had, maybe it would be Cullen at the end of that aisle instead of  _him_.

The coin, her luck, still rested within her palm, Evelyn unsure of what to do with it. When her father knocked on her door, she removed it from her hand and rested it on the vanity, leaving it behind.

Luck spent.

**

Cullen's chest tightened and stilled completely, heart arresting at the sight of her, at the end of the ballroom, dressed in all white just like in his dreams.

But.

She was not beautiful.

Her form was perfect, crafted by the Maker's infallible hand, the simple white dress hanging and clinging, accentuating and enhancing. His fingers itched to feel the silk of the dress and the smoothness of her underneath.

But she was not beautiful.

Her hair hung loose, vines curled softly by what magic he could not tell.

But she was not beautiful.

Her face was exquisite, painted by expert hands. Her lips were bleeding red, eyes rimmed in kohl that made them larger, more expressive, endless in their amber depths.

But she was not beautiful.

Because she did not smile.

Her face, a mask of stone, fused to her flesh, replaced her flesh. The stone consumed her whole.

Her father escorted her, his face its own quiet mask of contempt. He was so near his victory, desirous to see it completed.

He handed her off to Andreas, and placed an improvised kiss on her cheek startled that she did not shudder away from him.

She didn’t feel it.

Gone numb to the world.

Andreas lifted the veil from his wife’s face and turned to remark to his best man. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Evelyn lifted her eyes from the floor, looked past her husband and into Cullen’s molten gold stare.

He did not answer.

**

He held his hand over her’s as her loopy script scratched ink into the marriage contract and she did the same for him.

First scribed in ink.

Then blessed by song.

As the mother sang her invocation to the Maker and His Bride to bless the union, Andreas turned to his best man, asking him for the box given to him earlier. A small white thing covered in crushed velvet, opened to reveal some large and precious stone, glittering in the candlelight, the midnight bell tolling their death knell in the distance.

“A diamond.” Andreas answered even though no one asked. “Cost a fortune, but only the best for my little chocolate heart.”

The ring went where wedding rings rest, on the third finger of the left hand. Evelyn’s anchor still glowed, tiny tendrils of benign Fade Magic curling without. Andreas flinched a little, sliding the ring only up to her first knuckle, unwilling to push further lest he brush against the magic.

“You’ll have to go the rest of the way for me, darling. I don’t want to...well..you know.”

She pushed the ring until it seated at the crook of her finger and palm.

A woman wed now.

Sealed with stone.

The mother droned, blabbering on and on about love and honor and making frequent mentions of duty—no doubt her father slipped a few extra royals in the Mother’s pocket as additional insurance against last minute cold feet.

She didn’t listen, didn’t need to. Nothing mattered anymore. Everything was ash and ruin.

And it was all her fault.

 _Vhenan_. She listened to this voice however, Assan calling from the Fade.  _You are smarter than this._

“Lord Ostison, take your lady’s hand and chant the words to bind your two souls for all time.”

Mechanically, she handed her bouquet to Dorian who stood behind her. No maid but still honorable. The Tevinter took them but placed a hand on her chest, over her heart. A last desperate reminder of his plea.

She turned back to Andreas, the stone making movement difficult, and let him take her hands.

_Have you not been listening, vhenan?_

_Do you remember nothing of what I taught you?_

Andreas stumbled through the words, a Chant of some 12 or so lines filled with old words with old pronunciations that no one used anymore save this purpose. You weren't expected to recite it perfectly, just recite it. Marcher weddings are always the same. Vows are not repeated or invented, they are recited from memory, the say way every time.

_When hunters cannot fight._

By chance, perhaps by destiny, or perhaps by neither, her eyes rose from the spot on her hand where her luck used to rest and landed on Cullen.

_When we run out of arrows._

And he was speaking.

As Andreas’s mouth worked through the words, Cullen’s did too.

And his eyes were rooted firmly upon her.

For he was speaking  _to_  her.

He knew the words, he practiced them nightly as he practiced his dancing, heart giddy with excitement, fingers wrapped around the rings he helped make for her.

He knew the words as he knew his name, as he knew the Chant of Light, and he spoke them to her now. There will never be another, of this he was certain. And though she held another man’s hands, he wanted her to know that she would always, and forever, and  _only_  hold his heart. Nothing else mattered, not this wedding, not the slimy bastard standing between them, not even the laws of Man or Maker, he would love only her, and he married her now as best he could and would remain so tethered

For the rest of his days.

_When the bears and the dragons and the wolves come to tear our flesh, what do we do?_

Something detonated behind her eyes, an explosion of logic, sudden blinding clarity that wiped her senses clean.

Tears.

They welled and crashed through painted eyelashes, spilling from the corners of her eyes.

Stone broke into infinitesimal pieces, stone shattered, falling away in the wake of him.

The granite of her heart splintered and fractured, it crumbled and the  _golden_  raw flesh beat anew, beat stronger, she felt again. The stone had no hold over her. Not anymore and never again.

_When we are backed into to corners._

Let the world fall, let it burn, tear it down. She would sunder the world, throw the weight from her shoulders and let if fall discarded and forgotten.

For him.

_When we have no more means to fight._

Andreas finished his clumsy chant and the mother turned to her, exhorting that she too speak the words that would bind her soul to her husband for the rest of time.

_Vhenan. What do we do?_

She nodded.

Excitement welled and pooled within her, every nerve set afire her body coiling like a spring. It felt like sex, like making love, a pressure building from her core and rising to speed up the beat of her heart. Her fingers gripped Andreas tight, and her smile stretched so far it started to hurt her cheeks, they started to tremble.

Her Lord Husband choked, wary and afraid of her sudden joy.

But Cullen saw her smile, caught it, and held it in his memory, keeping it close to his heart to remember for all time, to keep him warm in the lonely nights to come.

Now. Yes now! Maker help him,  _now!_ she was beautiful. 

Because she smiled.

Andreas was the Champion of Ostwick, a strong man, but Evelyn was the Inquisitor, a _stronger_  woman. With her hands tight against his, she casually twisted her body and flung him aside, sending him crashing into the Chantry Mother, the two sprawling on the floor.

She stepped into the space he vacated, the space where she belonged, her body singing with energy, ready!

She took her Commander's hand and whispered words only he heard. The answer to Assan’s question.

_Vhenan. What. Do. We. Do?_

“Cullen,  _fly_  with me.”

And they flew.

Running, running,  _flying_  down the aisle away from the altar, screaming, shouting,  _cheering_  sounding behind them. She took his wrist and pulled and he came away, running with her,   _flying_  with her.

Down the aisle, dodging the tables, her one hand on his wrist, the other fisted in her skirts to keep her from tripping.

She laughed.

And he laughed with her.

They _flew._

 _Together_.

Closing in upon the double doors that would take them out of the grand ballroom. She would lead them through the halls of her home, out the entrance and to the stables where Jackson waited.

They would

_Fly._

Out of the city and half-way to Markham before her father could order the gates closed.

“Evelyn! The door!”

The double doors opened before she could kick them down,

And a soldier stepped through, covered in blood and soot and burns.

He fell to his knees, screaming.

“My lady! The Circle! The Ostwick Circle! Templars are trying to annul the Ostwick Circle!”

Wings clipped.

They fell like stones.


	33. Annulment

Cullen caught the soldier before he could crash to the floor in a heap of scorched armor and blood. The wedding guests surged from their seats, a press of bodies surrounding them, screeching like a flock of birds, their silks and capes fluttering like wings as they moved.

“Stop them! Stop them!”

The press of bodies parted and Andreas stepped through the opening, red faced and irate.

He reached for Evelyn, hands curled like claws to snatch her, take her back into his possession. He didn’t give a damn about a burning Circle, she belonged to  _him_  now,“That’s my--!”

Another woman tore through the crowd and tossed Andreas aside before he could make good his attack. Alexia, wild eyed and panic stricken.

“Evelyn! My son! Find my son! Please!”

“My daughter!”

“Inquisitor please, my cousins!”

“My brother is a templar, please Inquisitor, save him.”

They shouted for her, parts out of the whole, begging Evelyn to save the members of their family distant and close.

“Leliana!”

The Spymistress appeared, perhaps already running toward them, or perhaps a spectre summoned at the sound of her name. Whatever the reason for her arrival, she was there, hand at the ready to assist.

“Take him, see that he gets help. The rest of the Inquisition rides we me with all haste!”

“Yes Inquisitor. Please, be cautious, a force of templars in the midst of an annulment, you can’t…”

“I don’t care! Whatever it is, I don’t care.” She snapped. “Those are my people and that’s my fucking nephew. I don’t care! I don’t have time to debate with you what I can and cannot do anymore. Cullen!”

She softened, the steel in her voice changed to the tenderest silk. “You don’t have to come, stay with Leliana, coordinate from here, a Circle in the middle of an annulment, it might get really bad.”

“No.” He handed the soldier to Leliana and took her hand, the one with the gaudy rock made for show and without affection. Reverently, he removed it, flung it aside the way she flung Andreas to the side. The diamond rung like a struck tuning fork before it fell somewhere discareded and forgotten. He kissed her newly bare hand undeterred by the magic that flared in it.

“Where you go, I follow.”

“Always.”

She sealed the oath with a short kiss, a promise of more later once this crisis resolved.

Then she rose to her feet, the soldier’s blood splattering the hem of her dress and he came with her. Lion and Huntress together again, surrounded by her soldiers, her friends, her  _family_.

“Let’s fly.”

And they all flew.

All of them.

_Together._

The distressed shouts of her father, grandmother, and husband fading as they flew away.

**

She didn’t spare time to change, only taking the barest of seconds to switch out of her silk slippers into sturdy yet ill-fitting boots found in the stables. She slung a found bow on her back and snatched a quiver, not bothering to head back to the manor for her proper war bow.

No time.

With a dagger she cut the hem of her dress, slicing it off at her knee, strapping the weapon to her newly liberated thigh. She still looked like a bride instead of a warrior but there was simply no time. Every second wasted was a life potentially lost.

Evelyn never visited Ostwick Circle, her immediate family had no mages, save now Masan, and her father never hid his contempt for them. He was one of those old fashioned assholes, convinced magic was a curse from the Maker instead of one of His most profound gifts.

Despite never having visited the tower fortress, they didn’t need a map or directions to guide them. The tower burned like a brand against the midnight sky, a morbid beacon leading them battle, possibly doom.

They arrived to carnage, mages and templars bleeding and dying in the surf. Ostwick Cicle was built near the beach, a lighthouse in ancient times, a burning torch that served to guide merchant and war ships home, now it just burned.

Evelyn reared Jackson, leaping from his back, bow ready to sing death but for whom? Mages fought templars, templars fought templars, and one could not tell friend from foe. She approached a man in a templar’s armor, cautious, arrow drawn.

“Ser! What has happened here?!”

He reared on her, blade flashing in the light of the flames. “It is the Whore of Skyhold! She’s here!”

Realizing her error too late, she loosed her arrow wide and wild, missing him by leagues. He closed the distance on her and she raised her arm, preparing to have it severed from her before her enemy’s blade could sever her head. But another blade came to her defense, a burning Sword of Mercy, cutting the templar across the neck, blood spray reddening her dress, a splash of rubies against white silk.

“Have a care my lady! I cannot lose you so soon after getting you back!” Cullen grinned at her, joy returned to his features even as his enemy’s blood stained them.

She grinned back, readying a retort when a body in sand at her feet groaned to life.  A mage wearing enchanter’s robes.

“My lady!” He reached for her, covered in wounds and sand.

“Dorian!” They both screeched.

“What!” He and the Iron Bull were engaged, battling templars with red swords emblazoned on the breastplates, black sashes tied across their waists.

“We need your healing!”

“I’m busy!” Dorian’s red magic misted from his staff, locking their enemy’s body, rooting him still in the ground for Iron Bull to cleave in two neat chunks of flesh.

“Go kadan, think I can’t handle these wannabees on my own?”

“I’d rather you not” Dorian’s eyes flickered red and the wound across his cheek leaked blood before it poured forth like well with a broken pump. Red mist swirled around the Iron Bull, settling dry on his skin and warm like a blanket. Grey flesh tingled wherever the magic rested, not like the cool wintergreen sting of a barrier but like a heated embrace of a lover.

An arrow sliced across the meat of his shoulder and the wound knit instantly.

“Motherfu—that …that’s…kadan,  _damn_!”

Satisfied, the blood mage left Bull to attend his enemies.“What do you need?”

Dorian made quick work of the mage’s injuries and the enchanter sat upright brushing sand from him.

“Tell us what’s happened? Quickly!” Evelyn’s harsh command knocked sense into the mage, he babbled forth the story.

“I don’t know, my lady. It was 11th bell, I was turning into sleep when the fire watch began to shout. Next thing I know, the entire tower is on fire and there are templars in odd armor slaying everyone left and right. We sent our enchanters out to fight, to help our templars. Unharrowed mages and the children…we were trying to evacuate the tower, get them somewhere safe. I lost track of them. Then the demons started showing up! Between those and the dark templars, Oh Maker!”

Unchecked panic galloped in her veins, “Cullen we have to find the children!”

“I know, let’s go.”

Something screeched, the sound of the dying or something worse. Cullen’s teeth itched, his jaw clenching, teeth grinding back and forth to keep his mouth closed, to keep from moaning. He felt something clawing in the back of his skull, in his gut, unravelling him from the inside out slowly, the kind of feeling that never goes away. No matter how long he’d been out of the Order, no matter how long without lyrium, no templar forgets the screech, or smell, or  _feeling_  of a demon.

They flew up the beach chasing bright zinging lights in the distance. Magefire flaming against templar armor.

“Evelyn.” Cullen warned as hissing noises called to him from a distance. “Masan is a mage.”

“I know!”

“There are demons here, abominations, possessing the mages, they’re afraid!”

“I know, I know!”

Clawed fingers exploded from the sand, grasping at Evelyn’s feet. A demon crawled out of the ground, face a mix of sadness, fright, and malevolence. A woman’s face on a fear demon’s body, mouth open in a scream, eyes leaking bloody tears.

More claws emerged in bubbling puddles, black pitch boiled in the Void. A cold stench accompanied them, smelling like dry rot and mold. Eight, ten, twelve hands emerged from the sand and surf, abominations homing in on warm flesh to consume.

These weren’t demons come from the other side of a tear in the Veil, aberrant wanderers come to wreak havoc. These were the remnants of people, she could see their faces morphed on the demons’ twisted forms, overcome literally by their fear. Unharrowed mages, templars, children!

“Maker! Masan! Cullen any one of these could be him! I don’t, I don’t know what to do!” Paralyzed, her arrow shuddered against the bowstring, deadly only in it’s potential. She flicked the iron arrowhead between the demons trying to choose which one to shoot hoping she wouldn’t kill the boy she came to save.

He grunted, shield freezing under the onslaught of a monster’s icy breath. The metal frosted, grew crystals, and stuck to the cloth of his gloves. He was grateful no bare flesh touched metal lest it be fused and torn away later. “If he is, you can’t help him. Maker’s Breath, Evelyn fight!!”

She obeyed, arrow loosed from bow striking the crying woman in the eye, though the command he issued was less an order and more a frantic plea, fear clutching at his gut and holding fast.

She shook, teeth chattering from the blast of cold that blew in their wake. Fear demons, claws of ice and screams like howling winds. Her exposed skin prickled, the chill of night and the demon’s natural cold freezing her, making her regret coming to fight in naught but a torn wedding dress. Her arrows began to falter and miss, unsteady hands making for poor aim.

“I can’t do this! What if I kill him!?”

Her scream rent the air as ice crept up her left arm, rendering the limb frozen and unable to nock or draw arrow. She beat her arm against her thigh to shatter the ice while Cullen surged forward to block any blow meant for her, a prayer for the Wrath of Heaven on his lips.

He abandoned the battle prayers when he abandoned the Order, choosing old fashioned steel to smite any demons he encountered. But haste and urgency required these beasts be dealt with quickly. It was a gamble, dangerous and costly. Hey sang his prayer, hoping to have more success than what he did trying to Silence Dorian those months ago. The prayer triggered, light suffused him before it struck the demons. The abominations moaned, their voices more human now than monster, their transformations recent. Too late to be saved.

Smoking husks fell in the sand, dead, and Cullen crumbled to his knees, stricken almost blind with the effort. Like blood welling against cloth, pain bloomed across his forehead coursing with his blood to every inch of him.

“Cullen!”

Her sound splintered his pain, like hairline fractures in glass but it didn’t break, pain still held him, the hissing swelling with the headache.

“I’m fine. Are you hurt?”

“Arm’s burning but I’ll be fine. Are you okay?”

Cullen did not answer her, rising to stand on the point of his sword, already moving away before the demons’ smell could make him retch.

Children screamed, crying in the distance. Evelyn’s heart surged, beating wildly in her chest.  _Don’t let me be too late!_

She found a group of children shielded by an elven man with his body and as much magic as his mana allowed. A templar in black armor beat their sword against his barrier while another folded hands in prayer, a Silence splintering the magic.

“No! Stop! These are children!”

She ran ahead of him, toward the children leaving Cullen to deal with the dark templars alone.

“Evelyn!” He tried to call her back but a blade struck against his shield made him turn his attentions.

“Repent ! Join us and see your sins forgiven!” The templar sang, swinging his sword in wild arcs.

This was madness, the kind he wished he didn’t have to relive, templar turning blade against fellow templar. Kirkwall’s insanity repeated.

“You seek to kill children! Innocents!” Cullen spit back, crashing his shield against his opponent, he pivoted on his heel, blade arcing, catching another templar in the chest.

“Any mage given sanctuary by the Whore of Skyhold and the Black Divine are damned! Foul and corrupt are they! We will see them purged, and all who harbor them!  _We_  are the Maker’s true will!”

These two templars took the easiest job, the most cowardly, murdering children and their elderly caretakers. The elven man’s comrade lay in the sand, dead, pierced by a blade through the neck, a mageling under her, the sword running through him as well.

This entire trip was a trial of the Maker. He couldn’t kill Gareth Trevelyan or Andreas Ostison, forced to watch Evelyn endure them while he stood by silent, impotent to all action,  _complicit_  in it even. Every flinch, every mournful look of hers, he burned into his skin, a boiler stoked higher and higher with no vent for the pressure. But tiny fingers still in the sands broke his control. He erupted, anger, sorrow, and pain rolling through him like a tide of molten lava and he would see these murdering bastards scorched from this land.

“Those who bring harm!” He struck wildly, bringing his sword down in a brutal haphazard blow. The other templar’s shield bent, gave, then sundered. “Without provocation!” Cullen pushed, sliding his sword through the tear, catching his enemy in the neck with the tip of his blade, the spray of blood caught and held by the helmet. His enemy died in an echo of metal and bubbling blood. “To the least of His children!” He tore his sword free and rounded on the other, his new enemy, a woman judging by the sound of her shrill shriek of terror. She threw down her sword and stumbled backwards, scrambling away in the sand. He bore down on her, gripping his blade ready to plunge it into her chest. “Are hated and accursed by the Maker!” The tip of his sword, the brunt of his righteous fury rose high but before he could strike the filth from the earth, the woman tore off her helmet and screamed again.

“Mercy! Mercy! Please!”

And Cullen knew this woman.

“Initiate Amantha!”

“Please, please! Don’t kill me!” she begged. Cullen grabbed her by the collar lifting her to her knees, his sword still ready to strike her head from her shoulders.

“How are you here! You were supposed to be serving time at Griffon Wing. How are you here! SPEAK QUICKLY!”

Amantha shuddered and pressed her face to the ground, sobbing into the sand, broken phrases muffled by the dirt. “—following orders…. –Purged. I’m sorry—please---don’t—I’m sorry!”

“Who ordered this purge? Quit your whining and make sense woman!”

“The Black Divine!”

Cullen, utterly fucking sick of that brand of nonsense, backhanded her across the face. “She has a proper fucking name! Use it!”

“Divi--,” Amantha spit out a glob of blood. “She... purged her sancta, got rid of her enemies, expelling them from the Val Royeaux! Councilors, Chancellors, Chantry Mothers, templars, everyone who didn’t see things her way is gone! They got together, they declared war on the Chantry and the Circles, they wanna get rid of everything and everyone in support of the Inquisitor and the Bl—Her Radiance.”

The news crumpled him, like an armored punch to the gut. The Inquisition did not have the resources to fight the Chantry’s Civil War. They barely had the resources to maintain what they had, and now...“A...a civil war.” He groaned.

“Yes! Please…please don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!”

Another strong fist in her face and Amantha was out cold.

“Evelyn!”

The Inquisitor didn’t hear him, focused solely on the children. She pulled the elven mage out of the sand, grateful at least he lived.

“Ser, Masan Trevelyan, where is he?”

The elf shook his head, mind still foggy. She threw him aside and started screaming.

“Masan! Masan!”

He didn’t answer, and the children cowered from her, scattered and frightened by her shouting. She switched to her Orlesian patois.

“Neve! Neve! Reponn mwen!”

“Evelyn!”

“Masan!”

She saw the other mage, the woman lying face down in the dirt, her larger body concealing a smaller one.

Evelyn fell to her knees, shaking hands grasping for the dead.

“Maker! No! Oh please oh please no...” She reached her hand to pull away the woman’s body, she needed…she needed to see. Her hand was on the shoulder, ready to turn, to reveal and…

“Stop!”

Cullen grabbed her wrist and pulled her away, pulling her into his chest, face away from the murder.

“Don’t. You don’t need that kind of horror, not after today.”

“Let me go!” She struggled with no effort, a weak and token protest. “I need to. I need to know!”

“Let me do it.” He kept one hand on the back of her neck, keeping her face pressed firmly into his chest.

“Cullen, please don’t let it be him.” Her voice broke open into something helpless, weaker than the children’s wailing. He pressed her tighter, determined to at least shoulder this one burden. He knew the look of dead children pierced by templar blades, torn apart by demon’s claws. She didn’t, and Maker help him, he would keep that nightmare for himself.

He turned the body, rolling the woman away. The child underneath her stared sightless into blue-black sky and the stars beyond, already gone to his Maker.

He had wide brown eyes that probably sparked when he spoke of bugs and birds and pretty things. He was no more than six or seven years old, gone before adolescence could steal the chubby cheeks of childhood that his own little brother Branson seemed to never really get over. The rage that fueled his blade simmered then stopped, leaving hissing, echoing, dreadful quiet.

Cullen wept. Soul broken for this dead boy.

But he was not Masan.

“It’s not him.”

“What?”

“It’s not him, Evelyn. That’s not Masan.”

“My lady, ser.” The children huddled around the elven man as he addressed the pair. “Thank you for your help. Though I wish you were here sooner to save Mardin and little Franklin.” The elven man’s voice thickened with grief at their names.

“Ser!” Evelyn near shook him when she placed her hands on his shoulders. “Where are the rest of the children? Are they with others? I need to find my nephew.”

“My lady these are all the children we have at Ostwick Circle.”

“No, Masan Trevelyan—“

“Madam, I have been caring for Circle children since I was one myself. I know them all. Your Masan is not here. He never was. I would know if a lord’s son was under my care.”

Two waves crashed against the shore in the silence. “Dear Maker. What?”

“Evelyn, we have to get back to the rest…”

“Wait. What? Where is he then? He should be here, his mother…where…?”

“Evelyn!” Cullen grabbed her, “We don’t have time. We have to get back to the others. There’s a rebellion against the Circles and the Chantry. The mages are in danger.  _All_  of them! Skyhold too!”

Two threads of thought twisted and tangled, braiding over one another knotting into something too thick to pull apart or separate.

The mages were in danger.

Masan was gone.

But which thread to pull?

“Evelyn!”

“Maker’s bleeding fuck! Give me a minute!”

“We don’t have that kind of time!”

“I know! Fuck! Okay. Ser! Stay with us, we’ll get you back to the Circle.”

The journey back was easier, their group unmolested by the enemy templars or demons. The children snickered at the soft snoring noises Amantha made as Cullen dragged her in the sand behind him, her information worth more than her life, for now.

The Circle tower still burned, unsalvageable, leaving the mages, their templars, and the children homeless. But the battle was long finished by the time they arrived back, Cassandra panted through her greeting, breathless with relief.

“Maker’s Blood!” Cassandra swore. “Are you two alright? You went missing, we thought you lost!”

“Did you capture anyone?” Cullen answered her, Evelyn still reeling from knowledge her nephew wasn’t here.

“No, those we haven’t killed fled. The rest of us are dealing with the abominations, there are ...too many.”

“Evelyn,” Dorian panted, eyes still rubied with blood. “Did you find him?”

“No,” Cullen answered while Evelyn chewed on her bottom lip, heart and mind racing beyond mortal capacity. “And right now we have other problems.” He tossed Amantha’s comatose body in front of them startling her back to consciousness. She shrieked under their hateful gazes, looking for a body to cower behind especially when the Iron Bull fixed her with his one eyed stare. He hadn’t forgiven or forgotten her role in Dorian’s beating. He cracked his knuckles, his pound of flesh may yet be paid.

“Speak!” Cullen commanded and Amantha repeated her tale, seasoning the story liberally with ‘just following orders’, ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ and ‘they made me do it! I had no choice!”

Cassandra cursed, pyred herself, and turned to Evelyn.“Inquisitor. What are we to do? We have rogue chantry officials annulling circles. All the Andrastian mages in Thedas are…Inquisitor are you even listening?”

“What damnit what!”

“What are we going to do? Tell us what we should do?”

She was free, she was flying. For a moment, for one blessed, Maker given moment, in the space between that altar and the door, Evelyn felt weightless. And it all came crashing back down on her shoulders again, doubling, pressed down, The Maker’s Hand on her spine pushing until the bones snapped.

They waited for her, watching,

‘What should we do?’

Masan needed her. Her mages needed her. The Inquisition, her family, Cullen, all  _needed._  

He shielded her, as though Cassandra’s question were an attack and he her defense.

“Send ravens, all forces we can spare and even the ones we really cannot, divvy them up, send them to every Circle. Leave the garrisons with token forces, the Circles are our priority. Get word from the Divine, we need to know Val Royeaux is secured.”

He heard her gasp from behind him, a breathy ‘thank you’ whispered into his back. She stepped out from behind him, that moment enough for her to gather her senses. “Cassandra, Cullen. We need to get these people someplace safe and we can’t trust the Chantry, we don’t know who’s taking who’s side in all this. Rally them, bring them to Trevelyan manor. When we leave, we’ll bring them with us to Skyhold.”

“Can we take the load?” Cassandra questioned. “We were struggling. The resources…Maker, we haven’t even addressed what just happened back at the Manor.”

“I don’t care! Just get it done! Jackson, to me!”

Pursing her teeth into her lips he whistled. “I must ride ahead, I have to get home. Gather them up, mages, templars, all of them, bring them home. Do. IT!”

She galloped away, Jackson screeching as she rode him hard.

“Maker’s Balls.” Dorian swore, brushing sand out of his hair, spitting grit out of his mouth. “So while the crisis is nowhere near over, I still have to ask, are you two--? Is she still…? Are we supposed to call her Lady  _Ostison_  now?”

Cullen turned on him, hand on his sword, the blade halfway bared from scabbard. He did not find that joke, tasteless as it was, funny in the slightest. “Dorian, shut up.”

“You know, for once, gladly.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where am I going with this? I dare you to guess. Inbox me at mirabai0821.tumblr.com


	34. Strange Fruit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUPER DISTURBING IMAGERY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN JUST LOOK AT THE TITLE OKAY!

Jackson wandered in the front lawn, chewing on the sweet grass around the fountain. The servants screamed after her, begging her to approach with caution. Evelyn was heedless. In the time it took to ride from Ostwick Circle back home, one cold, disturbing,  _enraging_  thought emerged.

Masan was the last decent member of her blood family left alive in the world.

The.

Last.

A complete innocent, still sweet and untainted by his father’s sloth, his mother’s greed, or his grandsire’s rage.

She would move Thedas to see him remain so.

A protector, just as Grandmere called her.

The wedding guests were gone and she saw no sign of her ‘husband’ anywhere either. The implication dizzied her, but she made her choice, and would make it again.

“Damn the consequences,” She muttered pushing open the door to her father’s study where Clan Trevelyan sat assembled, attended by servants at hand with calming draughts of tea or liquor.

Gareth sat behind his desk. Grandmere and Alexia sat on separate divans. Eartha lay reclined, waving a fan lazily to cool and calm herself, the image of Black Andraste emblazoned on the back. Alexia sat jittery and upright, a glass of wine shaking in her hands. Vaughn and Susanna sat quietly together, sipping their deathroot wine in silence, never a better pair of mother and son.

“If you ain’t family, get the fuck out now!”

Non family members complied,  _quickly_.

Heads snapped, furniture shifted, someone called out, another screamed. But Gareth vaulted over his desk, wound around the divans, couches, and chairs. He ran his daughter down, a hunter chasing a rabbit to ground, but Evelyn not only remained, she pushed forward, setting herself on a collision course with a man she’d been running from her entire life.

He raised his fist screaming and she answered back, both their cries lost in the sudden boom of bodies colliding. His fist caught in her anchored hand, the mark spouting green fire, electrified in her rage.

She twisted, wrenching so hard the bones in his wrist snapped, possibly broke.

And Gareth crumpled to his knees in abject agony.

Evelyn repeated, her sound winning out over his. “Where is he?!”

And the world shifted.

Alexia and Grandmere were on their feet shouting.

“Where is who?”

“Masan, is he safe? Maker! Where is my son?”

Still contemplating the pain in his hand, bewildered that she--her of all people-- actually fought back, Gareth choked on his words, little gasps of pain coming from him instead of answers.

Grandmere tapped her arm with her ebony cane, insisting with a little push that she let her son go, but the plea enraged her more and she twisted harder drawing from her father an agonized shout.

“WHERE IS HE?”

“Where is who dear girl? He cannot answer if he cannot speak. Let him go.”

Alexia stood behind Evelyn, hands on her shoulders, weeping into her neck. “Where is my son? Why did you not bring him back?”

“Because there was nothing to bring back!” Gareth finally cried.

The entire room spoke a single word, uttered almost in unison.

“What?!”

Even Vaughn broke his head through the haze of his intoxication, mind struggling to understand. “Dad...my son? What do you mean?”

“What?” Grandmere dropped her cane to the floor to steady herself. “What do you mean boy!?”

She kept the pressure on his bones constant, applying steadily more and more rotation, exulting in the tiny pops of cartilage and bone. Gareth had to answer through grit teeth.

“Before the Circles came back, I heard about a former templar who had the ability to remove magic from children. The process was safe, he assured me, yet costly. I lied to you Alexia because I knew you wouldn’t dare make the hard choices for your son that I could. You never had any guts with the boy, you always coddled him! You should thank me for my foresight given tonight’s events! He could have been in that Circle and dead by now!”

Evelyn released him, staggering as though struck in the stomach, moaning, recalling once bright eyes with dull stares. Remembering mothers and fathers and families who wept at her feet begging her to change their children back.

“YOU FUCKING FOOL!” She tore at her hair. “Those men took him and your coin! Oh fucking Andraste!”

Tender hands confirmed his was broken and Grandmere fixed a fiery stare on her granddaughter. “Evelyn Cecilia! Make sense. Kounye a la!”

“They were SLAVERS Gareth! They’re going to, Oh fucking Andraste, they’re going to make him Tranquil and sell him as a slave! Shit! SHIT!”

Alexia fell to her knees, world cut out from under her. She stuttered, teeth chattering and shoulders shaking, remembering the last time she laid eyes on her son.

“I put him in the carriage to take him to the Circle. I kissed him, I waved goodbye. He said he would be a big boy, he didn’t cry, he was happy. He said ‘Don’t cry manmi, I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FINE!”

Love worked wonders, put strength in the weak and weakness in the strong. Love gave flight to the wingless. And brought quiet peace to dissonant cacophony. Love bent the Fade, and woke the dead. Love made a mother blind and deaf to the cruelties of her son and love made another mother move with a crazed speed never before seen in human flesh.

For love of her son, Alexia Trevelyan rose from the floor, snatched the dagger off Evelyn’s hip and a drove for Gareth’s heart.

For love of her son, Eartha Trevelyan stepped in the way of that dagger.

She didn’t cry out, she couldn’t, heart pierced through the back. The great screech of grief that sounded issued from Gareth’s mouth, from Evelyn’s, from Vaughn’s, Alexia’s and Susanna’s. Eartha died completely silent, the only sound of her passing the clatter of her ebony cane on the floor.

Initiated and over, murder plotted and committed in seconds. Too quick for anyone to respond, to react. Too late to counteract the damage done.

Eartha died, caught in her son’s arms with no time to even dream of the woman with the forest in her hair.

“Manmi?!”

Gareth forgot his courtesies, his rules, and screamed for his mother in the first language he learned.

“MANMI! Oh Maker! Guards! Maker! Guards! Anmwe!! Help me! Evelyn stop her!”

Evelyn remained standing, still and quiet like a granite statue, but the weight on her shoulders shifted with one great heave

And crushed her.

Two of Gareth’s trusted bodyguards arrived, steel bared. Alexia moaned falling to the floor again, begging and weeping at Evelyn’s feet.

“Please, Evelyn. Please! Help me! I didn’t mean… it was only for my  _son_. You have to understand, you wanted this too right?! After everything he did to us! All these years! What he was making you do. I was  _helping...._ helping you! Think about everything he’s done. He he he deserved it!”

The stone in her neck, in her flesh, made it hard to move, weary bones cracked when she turned to face Alexia.

“But not my grandmother. And she’s the only one dead, so damn your intent.”

“Take her! Take her!” Her father cried his command, voice a barely understood warble, watered down breaking with every breath.

Susanna stood, swooned, and fell, her son catching her before she could strike her head on the floor.

“Evelyn! Please! No! My son, it was for my  _son_!”

The guards seized her, one pressed the tip of her sword to her neck.

“Stop.” The Inquisitor never raised her voice beyond quiet conversation but the guards stopped, commanded by the sick gleam in her eyes rather than any power in her sound. “Fillip, Astra.” Her father’s guards gave the youngest Trevelyan their full attention.

“Ma’am.”

“The mages from Ostwick Circle are coming here. There’s no where else trustworthy to house them. Take every last one of your soldiers and make sure they get here safely.”

“Yes mistress. But what of…” Fillip jerked his arm and Alexia shuddered, expecting a sword through her heart at any moment.

“You two have work to do now, don’t worry about her. But if she’s still around when you return, then you can follow my father’s orders.”

Her meaning clear, the two guards departed.

“You would set her free?” Gareth shrieked, rocking his mother, face stained with tear tracks, eyes bloodshot, vessels burst from the strain.

“I do nothing. I neither aid nor hinder.”

“Evelyn,” Alexia wept at her feet. “You said he would be sold as a slave. Could he be...could he be alive still? Is he out there somewhere, alive? Please tell me!” Alexia had her freedom finally, but granted at too high a price. Trevelyan manor was agony, but the alternative was worse. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to run, her family abandoning her when she spoke her wedding vows. The sixth child of nine, born of parents who couldn’t afford four.

“He could be. I encountered that man once before, stopped him before he could sell those people, there were Tranquil children among them.”

“And you let him escape! You didn’t kill him? This...this is YOUR FAULT?!”

Again, her voice never rose above a calm whisper, but it struck unholy fear in Alexia’s heart. “Get out. Get. Out. Or stay and let Gareth’s men take you. I don’t care anymore.”

“But my son? What about my son? What are you going to do? You must find him! Please! Please! He’s only a boy and he loves you so much. He does. He loves his matant so much!”

Guilt morphed stone to sand, her knees buckled but she did not falter. Evelyn repeated her threat with only a stare.

Alexia whimpered as she fled and Evelyn didn’t care to watch her leave.

“Daughter! Stop her! Look what she has done! My mother! Manmi!”

“You want her, put your mother’s body down and go get her.”

Her father remained on the floor, arms too full of grief to raise them in rage.

**

His body was conditioned to fight, templar no more, but still a soldier. Cullen, with a sword in his hand, could ignore his own pain and misery, outfight it.

Without it?

His jaw clenched with grit teeth, his brow beaded with sweat. He walked at a casual pace, keeping silent sentinel at the back of the train escorting the remnants of Ostwick Circle to Trevelyan Manor but his heart beat like he had run for miles. Blood thudding in his ears so hard he glanced about to ensure no one else heard it.

Not now. He told himself. Not now, not  _now!_

Now.

After the battle was long over.

Now the screaming reached its ear shattering zenith.

Now he felt blood tacky on his fingers.

Now he smelled the gore.

Now he felt the heavy weight of his magic prison press on his chest and shoulders, weighing him down so he could do nothing but kneel and pray for a painless death.

Now, not before, not after, but now.

Now. Now.  _Now!_

He worked through the verses of the Chant but no words emerged, drowned out. No sound to center him.

A child strayed too close and he flinched, reaching for the hilt of his sword on instinct. The little girl shrieked and fled from him crying, having seen one too many templars today with their blades raised in murderous intent.

“Cullen?” Cassandra called to him, approached him slowly, clearly, hands visible and at her sides. “Are you alright?”

He fixed his bloodshot eyes on her and shook his head, unable to speak for fear he might shout or retch.

“What do you need?”

He shook his head again. He didn’t know.

“Can you make it, the manor is not that far ahead.”

Another shake, but what choice did he have?

The Seeker fell in step ahead of him, blocking him from the rest of the mages. “Hold on,” she whispered.

He nodded.

**

When they took his mother’s body from him, Gareth fell mute, catatonic. He remained on the floor of his study, the knife that killed her a finger’s width away from him, gently pulled from Eartha by the Pyre Attendants that bore her away for her funeral preparations.

Vaughn carried his mother to bed. Assisting her with her servants, keeping her liberally watered.

Yet Gareth remained, staring blankly ahead, eyes fixed on a solitary drop of congealed blood.

She crouched next to him when they were gone, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

“I should you leave you here on the floor in your mother’s blood, like you’ve left me so many times in mine. But I won’t. Damnit.” She cursed her confusion. There was no lingering affection, no distant unreachable memory of past father-daughter fondness. She felt no sentiment in her heart that excused this inexplicable bit of sympathy for her devil. She just did it. “And I don’t know why.”

She knew he was staring at her, she knew that when his gaze found her eyes he started to whimper. Birth gifted her with her father’s eyes; wide and deep brown, speckled with slivers of hazel—a gift bestowed from mother in turn. Evelyn lifted her father, all 210 pounds of his dead weight, and dropped him on one of the divans.

Her magnanimity ended there.

**

Feet caked in sand, still splattered with blood and demon gore, clad in a dress torn near to shreds. 

After a wedding she didn’t want, after fighting a grueling battle on the beach against templars sent to kill her mages, after losing her nephew to her father’s madness, after losing her grandmother to murder, after leaving him behind whimpering like a child, Evelyn Trevelyan exited the manor, and entered the gardens, mind devoid of direction but weary feet just carrying on.

She braced her hand on the willow, the tree where Cousland and Assan rested, her skin the same dark brown of tree bark. She splayed her fingers against the wood, digging them into the divots of the bark  hoping, wishing she could assume the bark as her flesh, have the tree consume her so she could rest eternal guardian of her loved ones bones and ashes.  
  
Drip.  
  
Drip.

 _Drip._  
  
A new red welled on her wedding dress. Like blood raining from the sky. Evelyn turned her head up, convinced that grief, madness, and exhaustion spurred hallucination, that she would see blood soaked clouds.  
  
He father hung from a noose, swinging in the...  
  
No.  
  
 _No._  
  
It wore the tabbard of her house across its chest, and the symbol of her house was its head. A horse, her father’s most prized stallion neck dripping fresh blood from where it was stitched to a straw and burlap body painted black.  
  
The words ‘Mudskin whore’ slashed in red paint across the tabbard.  
  
She didn't scream. Breath gone. She stared another moment contemplating the sick reality of her life. Someone murdered the pride of their house, mutilated it in a grim tableau to send her a message, a threat. And it could be anyone, any of their neighbors that smiled, praised their games, and drank their wine. The Ostisons had blood or marriage ties to almost every family in the city. All of them insulted this night by her actions.

It could even be Andreas himself.  
  
She wondered, sick smile stretching across a dead-eyed face.

_Would they come hang bodies next?_

“Possibly."

Evelyn had no means to cut the ‘body’ down. She shuffled back to the house, hoping to rouse a servant to help. She called, or maybe she didn’t, unable to remember if she had the ability to make any sound beyond the quiet slide of her feet across the floor. It took an age for her to climb the stairs, another age to make it to her room, and one more age to find her bow and arrow, ready to shoot the corpse thing down from her tree.

Yet when she returned…

Sera stood perched on the Iron Bull’s shoulder’s, dagger sawing through the noose that kept the body hung on the tree.

Dorian’s fingers flashed with fire, ready to incinerate the thing when it came down.

Varric spoke quietly with a pair of her father’s guards, sent them off with orders with a decisive swish of his hand. Cassandra went along with them her sword bared.

Leliana and Josephine coordinated with her servants, getting the mages, templars, and children inside her house, into rooms where they could rest after all that happened.

Rainier dug a grave for the horse, Swiftness, the jewel of their stables, while Cole sat in the roots of the tree, hands stroking his lap as though a mabari rested there.

He sung low and quiet as the rest of them worked.

“Blood on the tree and blood at the root…

“Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

“For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.”

The body droped as Sera cut free the last knot on the noose.

The straw body burned instantly, the white tabbard with the red lettering disintegrating, curling into black smoke and blowing away.

If only the memory were so easily dismissed.

Rainier laid the horse’s head in the ground. “Such a fine animal didn’t deserve to die this way.” He muttered.

“For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop…” Cole answered, earning him a sorrowful glare from the chevalier.

The Iron Bull let Sera down and turned, feeling a pair of deep brown eyes boring into his back. “Hey Boss.”

They all stopped, freezing as though caught in something illicit. “We hoped to get this down before you could see it.”

Her voice croaked, choked up with emotion, with gratitude. “I already saw.”

“Here is a strange and bitter crop.” Cole finished.

**

“Come take a walk with me Boss.” Bull smiled, reaching for her hand and took her back inside the house, into a darkened corner of the grand foyer not frequently traveled by the servants in their bustle.

He wrapped her up in his arms before she had the notion to ask after Cullen, holding her tight to his chest, a warm hand resting on the top of her head. Soothing, calming.

“Bull—wha?”

“We was walkin’ up the streets on our way to your house. I was behind, makin’ sure nobody was coming for us. I saw a wagon go by, all black, and these sisters tending a body in the back that I recognized. I’m sorry Evelyn. I’m so sorry.”

She burst apart in his arms, sinking her face into his shoulder and wept. The Iron Bull lifted her off the ground, the boots too big for her slipping off her feet, and carried her away from intrusive eyes and soft clucking tongues. Her sundering was a long time in coming and no one need be privy to it.

She wailed so hard her anchor crackled, green lightning sparking wildly, pulsing with each new sob. It tingled against his skin but nothing worse than anything he’d felt before. The Bull endured this for her, with her, understanding better than most that after the brutal life-fuck of the last 24 hours, some aftercare was in order.

And Other Boss wasn’t the one for it, not right now.

Evelyn spasmed in his arms, her nails biting half-moons into his back, her emotion morphing into a violent grief that stung and drew blood. He listened, cooing in unintelligible qunlat as she spilled the story about Masan, about Alexia, about her murdered grandmother. About her father’s catatonia and her brother and mother’s inability to see beyond a wine bottle.

She cried for her failure, for her selfishness. Her grandmother died with the dream of her family’s elevation not only unfulfilled but destroyed by a granddaughter who, at the last, could not do what was required of her and part with the better half of her soul.

To say nothing of the financial peril the Inquisition still faced. The peril her mages and her Circles now faced.

Finally, her sobbing slowed to a steady tremble. Evelyn heaved one last great sigh, expelling with a breath the last bit of stone still left in her. She stilled, a shipwreck coming to final rest among the grey rocks of the Iron Bull’s corded muscular arms.

He let her go, wiping her tears from her face, inspecting the damage her nails and scratches wrought in his skin.

“I’m so sorry Bull.”

“Don’t be Boss. You needed it. And there’s gonna be a day when I’m gonna need you to do the same for me. And you’ll be there.”

“I will. Now. Where is Cullen?”

“He had a rough time after leaving the Circle, when we got here we put him an empty room so he wouldn’t…hurt anyone.”

She kissed his cheek. “Thank you. My family isn’t safe here anymore. When the Inquisition leaves, we’ll bring them along. Have Josephine make the preparations.”

Bull cocked a smirk, glad to see the Boss back in earnest. “Aye Boss. Whatever you say.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Strange Fruit” began as an anti-lynching poem before Billie Holiday got a hold of it and turned it into a song that never ever fails to evoke tears when I hear it. If you’re into that kind of self-torture, take a listen here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs (The link is youtube, but some of the associated videos have very graphic images so be warned.)
> 
> Jill Scott got a hold of it too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkXAxpzE6Gk&feature=youtu.be&t=2m6s
> 
> Kounye a la! : Answer me
> 
> Manmi: Mother
> 
> Anmwe: Help me
> 
> Matant: Auntie


	35. Implicitly

He lifted his head from his knees at the creak of an opening door. Cullen huddled himself in the corner of an empty servant’s room. Pushed the furniture, a desk, a shelf, and a bed, toward the farthest opposite side, insurance against damage lest he lash out in one of his fugues.

The pulsing thunder of pain quieted to a dull roar, still booming enough rob him of sleep or rest of any kind, but not so much that he felt that his eyes might pop and ooze out of his skull. He burned with thirst, but every drop of liquid he poured turned red and smelled metallic. The ewer of water he knocked over stained the floor in a pool of blood that crept toward him every time he looked at it.

He didn’t call for her in his agony, or anyone else. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming. Other templars were watching him, eyeing him with curiosity. How could anyone be convinced that there was a life possible beyond the Order, beyond the singing chains, something worthy and livable, honorable, if they saw him fall so spectacularly? He kept taciturn during their march through Ostwick’s streets, offering cool smiles and short answers to their questions while he watched their faces melt in mage fire.

He forgot her existence for a few hours and remembered only blood, and magic, and suffering.

When she entered his prison he thought she was a ghost in her tattered white satin, and in her eyes he looked like a ghost, eyes hollow and dark ringed.

But heart called to heart, beyond the recognition of sight or sound, and he was on his feet and in her arms before she could breathe his name.

“You are the first real thing I’ve seen in what feels like years. Please tell me you’re real.”

She heard none of his plea, mumbled and slurred into her neck as it was. So she nodded, smoothing his hair, pulling him into the bed, removing from him every piece of sand caked and blood stained armor along the way.

“Men mwen. Ou se ansite.”

He listened to sound rather than speech, hearing her volume, timbre, and pitch rather than any words. She recounted her story, drifting off between segments, the two of them dozing in the safety of their entangled limbs, overcome by exhaustion before waking again and relaunching the tale.

He cried with her when she cried, offering his sympathies with kisses to her hair, cheeks, and eyes.

And she held him tightly, so close he smothered when he started to shake, recalling images of dead children, mages, and templars.

At some indeterminate hour of daylight, someone knocked at the door. When she opened it, a tub of hot water waited for them, with towels and soaps along with fresh robes in a basket accompanied by a note written in Dorian’s elaborately sloppy script.

_Sleep well. Work to be done when you wake._

They bathed together, in perfect silence, each washing the sand and filth and sorrow from each others bodies.

“I have to find him.” She broke the quiet gently, staring at their joined hands, her back to his chest, his chin in her hair.

“We will. We’ll send scouts. Cover the Marches and everywhere else.”

She shook her head. “Can’t spare them. All our soldiers, every last one, has to be devoted to fighting this war, we can’t split our focus, we can’t. I won’t let another mage or templar die if I can help it.”

“Then...your father’s soldiers…”

She laughed coldly. “You think I’ma trust those bastards? Besides, they’re hired swords. They fight not find. I have to find him.”

The water shifted when his arms closed tight around her. “We will Evelyn I promise. Whatever it takes, I’ll help you.”

“I have to find him.” She pressed, the answer plain in her words.

He pushed back, hearing her, understanding her intent but ignoring it, hoping he could convince her otherwise. “ _We_ will.” He argued.

They started to shake, water rippling with them as they shivered, not cold just scared.

“No Cullen. _I_ have to find him.”

He shook his head once, one solid and firm denial, just once, a token protest for the sake of his heart.

“They’ll never let you do this. Dorian’s going to be the first one to screech like a barn owl.”

“I know. But I’m not going to let anyone let me do anything anymore. I decide what I do. Y’all can either get on board or wave from the shore.”

His chuckle snagged on the emotion clumping in his throat. “You’re so damned stubborn it’s intolerable. Maker I love you Evelyn, I haven’t said that in too long.”

“You have, you don’t have to say it for me to hear it though, straw head.”

She didn’t either, and he heard it.

But they spoke no further, choosing to lay aside inconvenient truths for a few more moments of peace and rest. Outside day waxed and waned, Dorian, Josephine, Leliana and the rest tending to the business of moving the mages, the templars, and House Trevelyan out of Ostwick and to Skyhold.

She woke some time at twilight to a templar pressed into her chest, snoring softly.

Seamless.

“You’re staring,” he grumbled, waking when she stirred.

Evelyn smiled, forgetting she hadn’t in a long while. “I’m shocked really.”

Cullen popped open a sleep heavy eye to question her. “Oh?”

“The good Ser Rutherford sleeping with a married woman. The scandal!” She teased, perhaps a little too darkly.

The good Ser Rutherford groaned and rolled over, stuffing his head under a pillow. “Maker take you and Dorian both! That is _not funny.”_

“It is when _I_ make the joke.”

“Oh. so it’s like that is it?”

He rolled back to her, grumpy face replaced with an impish grin. He sidled closer to her kissing her stomach and breastbone.

“What are you doing?”

He kissed higher, pausing for effect between her breasts, as though deciding which one he would sample before laying a toothy kiss to the curve of the left one. “Well, if I’ve already sinned, might as well make my damnation worth it.”

His tongue drew a circuitous path on her flesh, winding and winding close to a dark and pebbled nipple but never quite reaching. Evelyn moaned, arching her back, pressing her chest closer to his mouth encouraging him, but still he took his time.

“Maker take _you_.” She whined.

“And when He does, and when He asks me why, I’ll simply point at you and go ‘That’s why. It’s Your fault really, You shouldn’t have made her so,’”

He granted her wordless request and closed lips and teeth around her nipple. Evelyn expelled a breathy punch of air flavored with a wanton growl. _“Perfect.”_ He finished, switching sides to her neglected breast, paying same ardent attention. “Besides.” He continued, leaving little licks close enough to the bud to set her gasping, but not close enough to make her howl. “I rather like the idea of defiling another man’s wife.”

“So long as,” Her fingers scratched in his scalp, digging for purchase in his hair, making him hiss against her flesh. “Andreas is the man and I’m the wife?”

“Exactly.” He clamped down on the other nipple, shivering with her. Evelyn parted her legs around his body, opening herself to his caress, his touch, and his need.

“One more way to stick it to him.” Her lips suckled at his neck, just below the ear, right behind the edge of his overgrown stubble. Her favorite part of him.

“Oh my darling, I’d much rather stick it to you.” He fit inside her, slick and easy, pushing home with one deep thrust. They howled twin cries of pleasure, almost harmonized, singing as he pushed and she squeezed. She molded to him, tight fitting like a Maker crafted glove, warm and soft and specially made all for him.

He growled his possession, feeling covetous and greedy, thrusts rough with a desperate edge. Let him be seared here within her flesh, let her bear his marks, he will leave her body throbbing with his reminders.

_You are mine._

_And you will come back to me._

His hands in the small of her back lifted, making her plant her feet behind him, thighs flexing with the effort. He pulled on her body, fingers grasped at her hips, bringing her down and into his lap and away again with every slide of his cock inside of her. The angle and position was new, making her spark, gooseflesh prickling from the sensation, from the touch, from the urgency, like starlight tingling just under her skin. She felt light, burning rays of his sunshine warming her from within and without and all around.

She gasped his name, no louder than the sounds he made when he slammed their hips together. Bestial grunting and short breathy cries, they made one sound with two voices, one love mixed together in their bodies and poured out from their mouths. His grunts assumed the form of her name and he bent forward, forehead almost touching her waist as he continued to pull deep and down, filling all of her.

He knew his lady was near her peak when her legs and thighs start rocking hard on their own accord, matching him stroke for stroke. Her arms were wild, disorganized, she didn’t know what to do with them, where to place them. She grasped at the headboard and the sheets, she grasped at herself, fingers pinching and twisting raised and raisin colored nipples, adding just a little bit of pain to the pleasure.

Her body fluttered, vibrating, ready. She wanted to break and shatter against him, trusting only him to piece her whole again. She would give and give and give all before she meant to take it away, possibly for the last time, forever even. She heard her name, grunted and shouted, prayed like holy scripture, before the world moved, the arms at her back lifting, bringing her upright, forehead to forehead. Sweat against sweat, lips to lips, tongue to teeth, sunlight to earth making love grow between them.

He tangled fingers in her vines, hips shooting up, thrusts faltering in the final quiver before release.

She flooded around him, singing her completion with a single garbled word, his name. He held off his ending, falling atop her, pressing her back into the mattress. He splayed her legs, popping one over the shoulder and the other around his hip, spearing her hard until there was no space between the sounds of slapping flesh.

She came again with a sharp swear, his fingers working urgently between them, stroking her pearl, determined to break her again before he himself broke.

_You are mine._

_And you will come back to me._

“Yours!” She cried unbidden and unprompted. “Cullen! Yours!” He buried and rooted himself, groaning with her as he came thick and abundant, filling her tight space with his seed. Maker save, Andraste preserve, they shuddered as he pulsed, spilling all, giving all. Hungry in the primal pit of both their guts that his seed would take root and grow in her lovely, lovely earth.

Another time.

For another life.

One more plain and ordinary than this.

She hissed as he withdrew from her, closing her legs together, relishing his wetness welling between her thighs and the soreness he left behind in them.

“Maker’s love, Cullen.”

“No. Just mine.”

**

She hated this damned room, the study. The blood was cleaned off the floor, bodies removed, both the dead and the living dead, her father being carried away bodily by his servants to his quarters.

She ran fingers over the gilded wood of his chair, contemplating the imagery of _her_ sitting at _this desk._

Evelyn thought better of it, choosing to stand, Cullen at her right hand.

The Inquisition stood as well, ignoring the plush furniture, well Sera didn’t ignore it, sitting perched the arm of the divan where her grandmother died, listening, eager for what comes next.

“My friends.” The conversation in the room stuttered then stopped, eight pairs of eyes turning to her, one pair to her side, fighting with himself to stay quiet. “We have work to do.”

Unfettered by her father’s rules, she dressed in leather and fur again, her luck in her palm.

“There is war again.”

Cassandra locked Amantha up in one of the old kennels in the barn, two Inquisition soldiers keeping watch until it would be time for her interrogation.

“Against the Chantry and the Divine, our friend Vivienne. And we will defend her.”

There were enchanters in her kitchen alongside her servants cooking the food left over from the wedding, what was meant to be the breakfast feast, the traditional first meal of husband and wife. It went to better purpose, filling hungry bellies, mages and children, the templars too.

“Every mage in Thedas is in danger from zealots who would purge them all. We will defend them as well. All hands, I will not see another child die in this madness.”

Cassandra nodded, the Seeker in her responding to Evelyn’s call to defend faith and mage alike.

“The Inquisition will take up the mantle of war again, to defend against what would tear Thedas apart.”

The Iron Bull knocked the butt of his axe against the floor and Evelyn’s heart squeezed, remembering ebony canes that did the same.

His finger wound its way into her grasp until their hands were pressed flush together. Cullen squeezed tightly, one last plea.

“But I,” She squeezed her apology. “I cannot fight with you.”

Half of them sat down, knocked on their asses by her declaration. “What do you mean Viney? You’re talking about us going to war and you won’t come with?”

“I can’t Varric. I have my own work to do.”

“Kaffas. She means her nephew.”

“I do. He’s been taken by slavers, the same one we faced after the dragon, the one responsible for the tranquil children. That sonofabitch has my nephew and I will tear the world apart to find him. I must. I have to. He’s the last bit of my family that matters that ain’t in this very room right now. My friends…”

She beat her palms on her father’s desk, the hard smack making her skin sting, knocking loose the tears in her eyes. “With all this, after _everything ___that’s happened here, I would have died. Ceased to breathe without each and every one of you. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me. Know that, know it in your fucking souls.”

_“Aye Inquisitor,” Rainier answered her. “We do.”_

_“But listen to yourself Rainier.” Cassandra, one of the ones who fell seated stood again. “ _Inquisitor._ You have a purpose, a role that needs to be fulfilled _especially_ if we are going to war. I understand you must find your nephew, I understand that. But how can we inspire faith, how can we _lead_ if the Inquisitor is missing?”_

_Josephine nodded. “Now more than ever we must put forth a strong face a united front. We cannot do that without the Inquisitor.”_

__Do you trust me?_ Asked before they entered the study together._

__Implicitly._ Answered with a smile._

_“You won’t. _He’ll_ be there to lead you.”_

_This time all of them sat down._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Men mwen. Ou se ansite.: I am here, you are safe.


	36. Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and credits to Miraphora s (SERIOUSLY WHY ARE YOU NOT READING HER OH MY GOD!) http://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/work and The Second Seal (yo, fam, her too!) http://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/ for their help!

“When?”

“Soon,” His heated stare bore holes into her back, pain she ignored by checking and re-checking the contents of the leather bag, food rations, enough for a few weeks before her bow would be required to fill her belly.  “Sunrise, maybe sooner.”

“And I take it you mean to go alone then?”

Dorian pursed his lips together in a thin line, surmising her answer from her deflected gaze and heavy sigh. “Like fuck you will.”

“He’ll need you, all of you, just like I did.”

“You will not go alone! Not while I breathe!”

“And he’ll need you the most, Dorian.  He has to fight a war. I’m not going to give him this job then take from him the tools he needs to do it.”

Jackson huffed, restless and indignant with being saddled with far heavier a burden than he was used too. Food, extra clothing, arrows, supplies. The great white hart could handle the load, didn’t mean he had to like it. 

“Is that all I am to you then, a tool?”

“No Dorian, you are my brother. And I need you to keep him alive.”

“And what about you? How will you stay alive hmm? Alone out there searching for a lost little boy in places designed specifically to hide the lost? How will you even find him at all? Knocking door to door ‘Excuse me? Have any Tranquil slaves about yea high?’ You’ll be gone for an age!”

She shoved him hard, but Dorian remained rooted and unyielding, desperate to talk her out of this madness. “Instead of bitching, offer me a solution. An alternative. Otherwise you are just someone else in my way, wasting my fucking time!”

Dorian fell silent as Evelyn tightened the buckles and straps on Jackson’s saddle. He had her solution, one that fit well within his new wheelhouse, but reluctance stilled his tongue until now, until he was sure she would not be moved.

“A phylactery.”

Evelyn stopped. “Don’t we need Masan for that?”

Dorian shook his head. “I studied a bit of the magic with Anh Bao before... well... _ Anh Bao _ . It wouldn’t be an exact beacon as it would be if the blood was drawn from the boy himself. But it’d be close if drawn from someone with a strong familial bond.”

“His father?”

Dorian snorted. “Only if Masan were a wine bottle. And since his mother has fled, looks like you’re the one.”

“And how would it work? I’m not templar you know.”

Dorian reached for her, lacing fingers with her anchored hand, squeezing. “You don’t need to be one, or a mage. Use your anchor Evelyn. You tear and seal holes in the Veil. You could do this too. I’ll supply the magic to create it, you’ll supply the magic to activate it. It’ll work like a torch, getting hotter the closer you are to him. Your anchor, you could...like with your Fade Arrow, warp the anchor’s magic through the phylactery, it will tell you where to go. Should anyway, this is all my hastily cobbled supposition. It may work, it may not. But as you are now, it will take you forever and a day to come back and kaffas, I love you sorora, and I don’t want to wait that long for you.”

“Dorian.” Her eyes softened, unprepared for the choking emotion that constricted around her neck. The heartbreak of leaving Cullen she expected, but now she remembered she meant to leave  _ everyone _ behind to hunt alone. She hugged him, a sharp breath stinging in her lungs. 

“I listened, you know. I heard you. I fought. I couldn’t do it Dor, I just couldn’t die like that.”

“I know amata, quite a spectacular performance. They’ll be talking about it for ages. ‘That time when the noblewoman quite literally threw her husband aside for her lover’. Varric probably has the manuscript halfway penned by now, ravens to his editors mid-flight.”

“And it was all her devilishly handsome brother’s idea.”

“No need to flatter me B, I’ve already agreed to do the magic for you.”

Breaking the embrace, she rolled up her sleeve, baring her arm to him, vein popping from the flesh. “Can you do it?”

“Get me some glass.”

**

“A Phylactery?” The word tasted metallic to him, like tongue or lip bitten too hard. “You can’t. You would need the mage.”

“Have faith,” The Iron Bull held open the apothecary set, salvaged by one of the mages from the ruined tower, while Dorian searched among the glass bottles, looking for one to serve his purpose. “It won’t be exact, but it will be something. The alternative means she roams Thedas until the Maker turns His face back and raptures us all...well maybe not  _ me _ …”

He chuckled to himself, at his own dry and dark comfort, his ill humor falling mostly flat with the rest, specifically the templar. Sighing, he turned, “Evelyn, if you would please.”

The four of them gathered in the barn, away from prying eyes save barn cats, mice, and Jackson, still huffing under his burdensome load. White Luck was stabled next to him, whinnying and neighing, trying to calm his longtime friend, curious as to why the hart was saddled and he was not. Master and his Bonded came here together, would they not also leave together?

Dorian tapped the stool in front of him, and she sat, toe kicking something metal buried under the hay strewn ground, She toed it with her boot to reveal the Trevelyan diadem, lost in the barn after she ripped it from her head in her haste to defend Ostwick Circle.

For all his insistence upon the trappings of nobility, her father didn’t much care for the family heirloom. He had a diadem of course--practically a requirement for a bann with the wealth of several teryns--custom made to match his armor, black iron, cris-crossed with yellow and white gold--the pale yellow and grey of their heraldry. So Grandmere kept and wore the original crown, donning it for the picture in the Grand Foyer, placing it on Evelyn’s tiny head when they were done.

“Had I my way, kokót…” She whispered to her, her child’s mind unable to grasp the meaning but never really forgetting the exchange. “Had I my way.”

Grandmere would never get her way, Evelyn thought, pulling her family’s crown jewels out of the dirt.

Dorian gestured for her arm, but Evelyn waved him off a moment, wiping the mud from the diadem, polishing it with the cuff of her sleeve until it shone again. She tipped her forehead to the jewels, resting it against the rearing horse made of hammered silver. A communion with the dead, a last goodbye.

_ Mwen dezole, Grandmere.  _

“My family, the Trevelyan one anyway.”

She bared an arm for Dorian, morbidly fascinated as he pressed the needle to her flesh. Pain flashed briefly as her blood pearled at the tiny wound. As Dorian let his magic flare, eyes red rimmed and filling, she continued.

“Take care of them, they are like children, all of them. My mother and brother, my father now too. Keep them safe, away from here where those bastards might come back and string up actual bodies. I pissed off a lot of people. It’s a thing I do I guess.”

Bull chuckled softly but kept quiet in his corner, observing the ritual at a comfortable distance.

She hissed, the drawn blood and the magic Dorian infused in it stinging her. Cullen tensed, her discomfort urging him to reach for her other hand.

“And you will too. You’ll never please everyone, you can’t. Don’t try. Do what’s right, Inquisitor.”

Cullen nodded, his first official act. “Yes my lady.”

The draught of blood settled in its vial, it flared with heat, drawing in green smoky tendrils of magic from her hand before it cooled to something just under body temperature. Evelyn felt a light pulling, a tug, less than that even, just a small itch towards a specific direction. “I feel it, west.”

“Ha!” Pleased with himself, Dorian held the newly made phylactery in his hand, turning it over, activating it with his powers, confirming. “Yes. West. Templar?”

Cullen took the vial, reaching for old memories. He only had to track down an apostate twice. Once at Kinloch, and once at Kirkwall and only before his elevation to Knight-Captain. Meredith preferred to keep him close, his paranoia useful to her in the early years.

“West.” He agreed.

Dorian preened, proud, turning to his lover “Well if this Inquisition thing falls through I can always become a hedge mage.”

Bull rolled his eye, shaking his head with only a little disapproval. Satisfied he earned his daily allotment of rises, he turned back to her “Shall I?”

Evelyn nodded, and Dorian pricked her skin again drawing more blood.

Cullen froze. “Wait, another? You took enough.”

This stung harder, hurt. The creation of a phylactery for another felt benign, like a bleeding done by leeches. This...this  _ hurt _ . She overcame the urge to pull her arm away, gritting her teeth, allowing Dorian to take what they previously agreed upon.

“What are you doing? Dorian?  _ Evelyn! _ ”

Fascinated before, she turned her head away this time. Unable to watch, unable to answer either. Her sheepish and shy stare, her reluctance to meet his eyes told him everything. But she owed him this from her own mouth. “It’s for you.”

“Oh no.” It was a common trope in the chapbooks he once confiscated from the young mages, illicit tales of romance between mage and templar, the mage often gifting their lover with their phylactery.

_ So you’ll find me, if I’m ever lost. _

_ So you’ll come for me. _

The stories all hinged on the possibility of the lovers being separated, of valiant templar braving sea and storm to find their beloved. But this separation was purposeful, intended, and so there was only one reason now that she’d give him this.

“No. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I will not take it!”

Dorian finished a second phylactery in another small glass cylinder, empty, once used to carry essence of orange, a common component of cosmetics, usually oils for the hair. The vial still had remnants of the oil infused into the glass, giving it a light citrusy scent. He handed it to its owner, who then handed it to its keeper.

“This isn’t the same as going off to the Hinterlands or the Forbidden Oasis. Something with a timetable and a deadline. I don’t know how long or... how easy this will be.”

She danced around stating undisguised truth, Dorian sighed, looking at Bull for a rescue, both privy to an exchange that should be private. 

The Commander...the  _ Inquisitor  _ stood unthinkingly to his feet, pulling her with him.

“Don’t.”

“I came back from Haven, from the Temple of Mythal, from Corypheus. I can come back from this too but…Take it so you’ll know.”

“No.”

Phylacteries also, in lieu of being a beacon for the lost, served a second purpose.

“If that goes cold.”

They were beacons of life.

“Know I died with your gold in my eyes.”

“Evelyn!”

She ignored him, stubborn, barreling over his protests. 

“Know that I loved you. That you were my last thought and my last breath.”

“Stop…”

She cocked a hip, jutting one to the side, fist resting on it. “This isn’t one sided you know.  _ Inquisitor _ .” She teased him with his new title, voice breaking even though she smiled, hoping to take the bite out of its first few uses with him. Smiling, tears threatened but only just. “You’ve got a war to fight, this will be just as dangerous for you as it will be for me.”

She wheeled then, turning half a circle around to fix a glare on Dorian and Bull. “And _y’all_ _better_ keep him safe.”

Laughing, Dorian bowed, complete with his Tevinter flourish. “Of course my Lady.”

“You got it Boss.”

“He’ll need you, all of you. Like I did. So help him. He is my eyes, my hands, my will, and my heart. Do for him what you would for me.”

“Evelyn, amata, save your goodbye speeches for the rest.” There was a handkerchief stuffed somewhere in his pocket, he grabbed for it, anxious to occupy his hands, feeling so  _ useless _ .

“This  _ is _ my goodbye speech, I’m leaving  _ now _ , no time to linger.”

Bull pushed his back off the wall, offering his input for the first time. “Don’t lie, Boss, not now.” 

Huffing with an indignant little slump of the shoulders, she snarled at the Iron Bull--”Asshole.”-- before relenting.

“Fine. It’s hard enough saying my goodbyes to the three of you. Saying my goodbyes,” She pointed to the diadem, resting on the stool. “To a Grandmother that I won’t get to pyre. Saying goodbye to everyone else, will be impossible. So I have to go, now. Before I lose my will to leave.”

She pushed the new phylactery,  _ her _ phylactery into Cullen’s hands. Snaking an arm around his neck, she pulled him into her, a bone popping embrace. She took a deep, lung-filling gulp of air, breathed him in, his exhale was her inhale. His breath was her  _ life _ and she breathed him in and held, 

And  _ held _ .

“Be safe.” He told her, whispering chaste but desperate kisses against her mouth, drawing from it plaintive whine an unconscious plea from her heart entreating with her mind;  _ Do not make us do this. _

An arm around her shoulder, the other reaching up, fingers curling in the loose edges of her hair at the nape of her neck. His face pressed to the side of hers, lips on the scars on her check and in the edges of her roots,  _ breathing _ , trying to teach himself how, so he would know, remember-- how to breathe without her.

“You can’t know where I am, or what I’m doing. If I have to do something  _ bad _ ...I don’t want you to know. They have to think I’m gone, acting alone, so anything I do commit won’t come back to you. So you can’t be held responsible.”

“Be safe.” He repeated, all other concerns secondary.

“I will.” Hers was the first step taken back, not far, just enough to take them from chest-to-chest to nose-to-nose. The coin in her hand, home at last, pressed into his cheek. “I got luck on my side remember?”

“I do. And I’ve my lady’s token. I’ll be fine.”

Every second spent, was a second lost. That Dominus dragged Masan further and further away, inflicting untold horrors upon him. She had to go, no matter the screaming in her heart, no matter the cowardice icing her blood.

_ Now. _

Sensing these final seconds, he put all his love into one last kiss and seared it into her lips, and it was not enough.

She pulled him from, snatched her whole body away and ran from him. She vaulted onto Jackson’s back, the hart rearing in the air, screaming as she screamed, howled. 

A hunter’s cry for luck.

And a woman’s wail of pain.

Dorian and Bull, howled after her, sending her on good hunting and swift return.

Cullen called last and loudest, singing with his wail, until his voice gave out, until she was gone from view. Down the approach and past the gates of her home.

She galloped away, outstripping the wind, howl echoing after her sparing none of them glances back knowing one wrong sorrowful stare would be enough to break her will and make her stay.

Gone. 

Just like that. 

Gone.

Flown away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mwen dezole, Grandmere. -I am sorry Grandmother.
> 
> And here is where I leave you. Or rather where they leave each other and where I leave you. After much thought and deliberation, I've decided to split Bold in Deed into two sections. It signifies a split in the narrative, one I feel more comfortable with exploring as a separate story. (And it gives me more time/space to add the things I wanna add to the story.) If I left BiD as it was, it'd get too large and too unwieldy. This is a good place to end it and leave them for now. Give me time to plan and plot and write.
> 
> So thank you. Those who read. Those who are still reading. Those waiting for me to finish and those who haven't started yet but wanna. Thanks for sticking through with all the *terrible* things I did to my favorite babies. Thanks for the sweet messages y'all left me (and the not so sweet but screaming like OH MY GOD--thanks for those too). Can't do it without y'all. Would be largely UNMOTIVATED to do it without you readers so again, for everything,
> 
> Thanks.  
> Ash
> 
> P.S. Because I never leave you at the end with nothing to look forward too, check out the sneak peek of the second half of the story: Bold in Deed: Time Tryeth Troth  
> http://mirabai0821.tumblr.com/post/136156258408/bold-in-deed-time-tryeth-troth-sneak-peek


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